MESSAGE TO REFERRING PROVIDERS
COVID-19 UPDATE
- 5/18/20
As the restrictions imposed upon us all by the COVID-19 pandemic begin to lift, we at Colorado Retina have officially started the re-opening of ALL our offices and physician schedules to meet your needs! Our goal is to facilitate timely visits for both, established and new patients. However, we must strike a balance between accessibility, and our responsibility for the health and safety of patients and staff. Therefore, the current process of fully re-opening will be gradual and cautious.
As our in-clinic appointment availability expands, so does our surgical access. We received the green light to once again operate on routine cases. We
are actively coordinating with our partner hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers to maintain as much access as we are able to obtain.
Our Lafayette clinic is now OPEN, and our Frisco satellite office will be holding clinics on the following Friday's: 6/12 and 6/26, for established CRA patients only at this time. Saturday AM clinic's at Englewood have also resumed, to facilitate additional appointment availability.
We appreciate your patience during the incremental transition to full-availability. CRA will continue to communicate clearly as we establish a "new normal" in a post-COVID world, together. Thanks for hanging in there with us, please reach out if you have any questions or feedback. We look forward to continue to partner with you!
URGENT/EMERGENT REFERRALS
As usual, all urgent/emergent referrals that need to be seen by a CRA physician within
72-hours
, please do
not
fax, email, or use our website platform to notify us of an emergent request, instead,
call our triage line for immediate assistance
. All urgent/same-day appointment requests will be triaged to determine urgency and will be following physician direction.
Our triage department is available via phone at
(303) 261-1600 x1
,
Monday-Friday from 8:00am-5:00pm MST
. We also have a 24/7 (including weekends) designated on-call physician to ensure we are fulfilling the needs of our referring providers and their patients at all times.
NON-URGENT REFERRALS
Business as usual, please continue to send all non-urgent referrals via your preferred method of contact:
email
, fax, or through our
website (
preferred method)
. Once we receive your referral, within two business days one of our team members will reach out to your patient directly to schedule their initial appointment with a CRA physician. Because of the gradual re-opening process to be able to see more routine patient appointments, please be patient as we are doing our best to accommodate patient and referring provider requests.
SURGERY
Good news - surgical access is currently expanding! In accordance with current guidelines, all “elective” retinal surgeries that were previously postponed due to COVID restrictions are back on the books. We are actively coordinating with our hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers to maintain as much access for all, routine and urgent surgical cases.
IN-CLINIC APPOINTMENT PROTOCOL
A Colorado Retina staff member will attempt to screen the patient by phone 24-48-hours prior to their scheduled appointment to ensure that the patient/caregiver is not at high-risk of COVID-19 infection, including travel outside the state of Colorado, contact with a known or suspected COVID carrier, or showing symptoms of viral infection including fever, chills, cough, loss of taste or smell, or shortness of breath in the past 14 days.
Upon appointment arrival, the patient/caregiver will be
pre-screened
prior to entry for COVID-19 symptoms. During the pre-screen process, the patient/caregiver temperature will be taken, no person showing over a 100 degree body temperature will be allowed inside our clinics. We also ask,
when possible, the patient enter the clinic alone
, caregivers will be encouraged to remain outside the clinic during the patient visit, unless their presence is absolutely necessary for mobility reasons. Please, no children in attendance to appointments.
Patient appointment times will be minimized, and waiting areas are set to distance patients from each other by at least 3 feet.
TELEMEDICINE:
Non-emergent, established patients are now able to use our HIPAA-approved telemedicine video conferencing option to hold one-on-one appointments with their CRA physician, from the comfort of their own home. Most insurance providers will cover teleconferencing appointments. There are of course restrictions as to what diagnosis and services we can provide at a virtual level. Please have your patient contact us directly if they are interested in utilizing our new telemed service.
CANCELLATIONS/ RESCHEDULING
We are waiving all cancellation fees indefinitely
, no questions asked, for all patients who prefer to reschedule an upcoming appointment or must be rescheduled during the pre-screening process. All patients will receive a direct call if there are any changes to their scheduled appointment and/or surgery. If patients have any questions regarding the care, or an upcoming appointment, please instruct patients to call us directly at
(303) 261-1600
.
THANK YOU
We encourage referring providers and patients to continually refer to our
website
for updates on care procedures and other actions CRA has implemented to ensure the safety of all.
As a fellow vision care provider, we understand you are dealing with a rapidly changing, uncertain situation. We want you to know we are here to support you and appreciate all you do to continue to provide the upmost level of safe and efficient care to each patient. Thank you for your patience and cooperation during this state of emergency. Given the fluidity of the situation, we will continue to reassess our protocols and adapt as we learn more about what care processes will be sticking around for the foreseeable future. If you have any questions or concerns in regard to our new policies, procedures, or method of care please reach out to us directly.
