COVID-19 LOCAL PRIMARY CARE INFORMATION FOR ELGIN

MARCH 2020

I'm hearing a lot of great questions about COVID-19 which are beyond the general information we can find in the media and need to know. These are very practical questions about what to do in your offices.

I will try to answer some of the common ones we know the answers to here and let you know ways you can keep up to date in the coming weeks.

After reading this and checking out these resources, please think about your other questions or needs and submit them to me HERE so I can find answers and reply collectively to the whole group as you will all have similar questions or if you have a unique one the answer will benefit the whole group. This will also save many of us asking our public health officials the same questions repeatedly.

By now you will have seen that non-essential travel should be limited and schools will be closed for 2 weeks following March Break. The are wise measures. If we do not act to reduce transmission locally (Oxford/Elgin), the worst case scenario projections we could expect to see a peak of 500-1000 cases per day in Elgin/Oxford, 1500 ICU admissions and 3000 deaths based on population size alone. Check out this GRAPHIC here to understand why these measures have been taken here. We don't have cases locally and would like to keep them to a minimum. If we can avoid this peak, we have the resources to handle everyone.

Some of the practical information:

I strongly suggest that those of you who have unsubscribed from OMA Emails re-subscribe. Log in to your account at OMA.ORG and go to your subscription settings to do this. There is also an OMA app for APPLE and ANDROID you can turn on notifications to receive alerts this way. Their COVID-19 WEBSITE for physicians is quite comprehensive.
Elgin is starting to plan for an assessment centre. We may also end up needing physicians willing to fill in for each other or in hospital (i.e. if hospital physicians become sick or have to self-quarantine). Please click this PHYSICIAN HUMAN RESOURCES SURVEY to let me know if you are willing to work in an assessment clinic (currently plan would be a 6 hour daytime shift, I believe). You would be paid an hourly or sessional rate which is being clarified (similar to the H1N1 clinics we did for those who remember). We have advocated that we should be encouraging most people to be triaged over the phone to only see those that actually need to be assessed. Some of you may have already received a similar link from the hospital but they may not be capturing all of the physicians in Elgin from their distribution list. Please do this one as well, even if you've done the other one.
CPSO sets out expectations for physicians during public health emergencies in this POLICY
What are your responsibilities as an employer - do I have to pay my staff to be off? This depends if they get COVID-19 at work or outside of work. OMA has answered these legal questions HERE
What about you as an employee or a worker - the same OMA DOCUMENT answers these questions.
Canada Employment Insurance has been modified - this may impact your staff or your patients may have concerns about income if they are not able to work due to quarantine or closures. These will NOT require a doctors note to access. This ARTICLE summarizes the new policies.
Government has approved telephone codes, we are awaiting clarification of the technical issues around this and OMA will send out information as soon as available. What seems to be clear right now is that you can go ahead and assess someone over the phone for COVID-19 now and bill when the code is available.
Current information on how to manage people presenting with symptoms or concerns about COVID-19 in your office is found HERE. Triage people over the phone, tell them not to come to the office or go to ER unless they have more severe symptoms or risks and need to be assessed, for now call PH for what to do next in these cases.
Dr. Chris Mackie (Middlesex-London Health Unit Medical Officer of Health) will be holding a teleconference tomorrow for local physicians at 12:00 if any of you wish to join, you can by clicking this LINK at that time. Please keep in mind some of the information may not be accurate or specific to Elgin.
Our clinic has a FACEBOOK PAGE and we are sharing some information with the public there, feel free to copy/share things posted. As physicians in our community your voice and opinion is respected, so use social media to reach the public with accurate, valid and rationale information.

Kellie Scott

Did you forget to block the time again? Block the next few months in your calendar now!!

It's always the 3rd Wed of the month 1230-2. Don't miss out on important practice-changing information to keep up date on what's going on locally, regionally and provincially.

Dr. Kellie Scott and Dr. Melissa Tenbergen

Elgin Primary Care Alliance