Page 41 - Delaware Medical Journal - November/December 2020
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CASE REPORT PRACTICE MANAGEMENT
“We’d love to continue some telehealth,” says Cynthia Heldt, MD, of Bancroft Internal Medicine in Wilmington. “Certainly for some follow-up, the visit, things don’t go as smoothly, but the second visit seems to go better because people know things like, ‘I have to have my medicines with me.’”
INFECTION PREVENTION
“We always cleaned exam rooms in between patients, but it’s much more intensive now,” says Gill. “There’s
a much more intensive sanitizing in between every visit, and then a deep end of the day.”
Knowing those measures are in place, Gill says, has made patients more so they will likely continue for the foreseeable future.
Gill’s practice has always had masks and hand sanitizer available for patients and staff, but plans to keep encouraging their use more frequently, even post- COVID. “COVID is very contagious, not require a mask for all patients [in future], but in those contagious cases, where someone comes in with a cough or a fever, both patients and health
care professionals should wear a mask. Maybe it’ll encourage people to take down.”
Delaware Back Pain & Sports Rehabilitation Centers has encountered some patients who were asymptomatic but later tested positive for COVID, says Sean Bakst, COO and CIO. “It was a valuable reminder that we can come in touch with people who are COVID- positive all the time. We cannot get
complacent [about infection prevention]. I think how we screen patients before they come in is going to change forever. Practices in general are going to be more conservative as to whether they
REMOTE WORK
At the outset of the pandemic, Delaware Back Pain & Sports Rehabilitation Centers shifted any employees whose presence in the office wasn’t essential to telework, says
Sean Bakst.
Going forward, some hybrid model
of in-office and remote work is likely to persist, adds Barry Bakst: “We’re not going to close our back office or let anybody go, but we may just have some staff come in three days a week and others two days a week, to ensure everybody’s distanced. We may end up rearranging the office space so everyone is at least six feet away from each other.”
WORKPLACE ATMOSPHERE
To handle the high-stress environment
of a medical practice in the COVID
age, many physicians found it helpful to establish rituals to check in with staff, and those rituals may last past the pandemic.
“What helped us a lot was having daily
really good to review what questions to ask the patients, be sure staff knew what to expect and let them vent their concerns.”
Especially as many employees continue to work from home, Delaware Back Pain & Sports Rehabilitation Centers has kept up a practice of weekly staff meetings via Zoom to check in with each other and keep employees from feeling detached, says Sean Bakst. “When all this is said and done, there’s no question that the staff members that have been with us through this, there’s going to be a special relationship there forever,” he says. “We’re all going through a war together.”
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