2. Figure out how to safely see patients, particularly in your waiting areas and common spaces.
Logistic factors, such as managing patient flow, will change. Waiting rooms will be emptier; in some locations, patients may be asked to wait in their cars until an exam room is available.
The AMA also suggests limiting nonpatient visitors by posting the practice’s policy at the entrance and on the practice’s website. If service calls for repairs are needed, have those visitors come outside of normal operating hours.
Commonly shared objects such magazines or toys in pediatric offices will likely disappear. Wipes, hand sanitizers, and the wearing of masks will become even more commonplace. Those who suspect they’re ill or who have respiratory symptoms may be relegated to specific “sick visit” appointment times or taken to designated exam rooms, which will be thoroughly sanitized between patients.
3. Prepare for routine screening of staff and other facility workers.
According to recent CMS guidelines, you and your staff will need to undergo routine screening, as will others who work in the facility (housekeeping, delivery personnel, and anyone else who enters the area). This may mean regularly stocking screening tests and setting guidelines for what to do if one of your staff tests positive.
You may need to hire temporary workers if your staff tests positive. The CDC recommends at the very least understanding the minimum staffing requirements to ensure good patient care and a safe work environment. Consider adjusting staff schedules and rotating clinical personnel to positions that support patient care activities. You may also want to look into cross-training your office staff so that they can fill in or help out with each other’s responsibilities if one or more persons are ill.
Dr. Kutner is on board with these changes. “We don’t want to get rid of social distancing right away, because it will give us a new spike in cases – how do we figure out patient flow while honoring that?”
4. Develop a strategy for triaging and caring for a potential backlog of patients.
“Many of my partners are scared right now because they have no income except for emergencies,” said Andrew Gonzalez, MD, JD, MPH, a vascular surgeon and assistant professor of surgery at Indiana University, Indianapolis. Almost all nonemergency surgery has been put on hold.
“If we don’t operate, the practice makes no money,” he said. He thinks revenue will continue to be a problem as long as patients fear in-person consultations or undergoing surgery for nonacute problems such as hernias.
As restrictions ease, most physicians will face an enormous backlog of patients and will need to find new ways of triaging the most serious cases, he says. Telehealth will help, but Dr. Gonzalez predicts many of his colleagues will be working longer hours and on weekends to catch up. “Physicians are going to have to really think about ways of optimizing their time and workflow to be very efficient, because the backlog is going to prodigious.”