What to Expect When Visiting a Clinic with the Coronavirus - Dr. Michael Schooff

Coronavirus Information: https://www.chihealth.com/coronavirus

When a patient comes into one of our primary care clinics as soon as they approach the clinic they’ll be met by a greeter. The greeter will ask them the three screening questions that have been designated to screen for potential exposure do to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) infection.

They’ll be asked if they’ve traveled to an international location in the past 30 days. They’ll be asked if they’ve had close contact with somebody with the Coronavirus infection, and close contact means 6 feet contact, and they’ll be asked if they have any symptoms: a fever, a cough, difficulty breathing, shortness of breath.

For those who have any symptoms, they will be asked to put a mask on and to wash their hands with hand sanitizer right before they come into the clinic. That way we can keep everybody else in the clinic safe from whatever infection they may have.

If they’re deemed to be at high risk, so if they’ve traveled or they’ve had exposure and they are having symptoms, that person will be brought immediately to an exam room. So, they don’t have to wait to check in, they don’t have to wait in the waiting area. They’ll go straight to a secure exam room. Where then, we’ll take care of them wearing our proper protective equipment while they keep their masks on and we’ll address the patient’s concerns.

Then, we will do the appropriate examination and testing for them to see if they have influenza or might be at risk of the Coronavirus infection. For other people coming to our clinic, and maybe they are having symptoms, but don’t have a travel history or exposure history, again we’ll have them in a mask to keep them from sharing their germs with other people, but we’ll handle them just like we do any other day.

So, they would come in with their mask on and check in. We’d actually put them in a part of our waiting area with other people who are having sick symptoms, separated from the people who aren’t having any symptoms. For example, the moms with their little babies, or people coming in for their routine health care visits.

If they come in and aren’t having any symptoms and haven’t had any travel, then we would treat you like we do every other day. But that will keep all of the people that are coming into our clinic and all of our clinic staff as healthy as possible. We’re doing this out of an abundance of precaution just to keep everybody safe while this situation is going on.