As you know President Trump called the COVID-19 Pandemic a National Emergency on Friday. We have been contemplating our office procedures in the near term. As a general rule most of us are feeling fine. Many will insist they have had no exposure to this virus and in general that is likely true. From the Gulf Coast Hospital cases (3 confirmed last week) we have learned that nearly 2 dozen workers/providers had contact without protective measures before these cases were suspected, diagnosed and isolated.
Noting this we think it most prudent to recommend your report visit appointments be converted to phone visits. If you are on the schedule this and the coming 3 weeks, please plan to speak to me or my staff on the phone for scheduled visits that don't involve direct procedures. Likewise it would be best to avoid the office except for the instance of acute medical problems (pain, suspected urinary or skin infections etc).
Feel free to cancel non-urgent appointments as well. Don't feel obligated to come in due to appointments made in the past.
We will be open and honor appointments face-to-face as long as your aren't coughing and sneezing. Likewise prescription pickups, lab draws and planned medication injection appointment can be kept as planned.
If you have minor respiratory illness and no documented fever I recommend you follow my years' long protocol of managing symptoms for what are likely non treatable viral illness (including the non COVID-19 corona-virus). Read
The Stay At Home article below for those details.
Most of you will want to be tested for this virus. This isn't necessarily the wisest request and I will explain why. If we run a diagnostic test population wide where the actual incidence of a disease is low, the majority of positive reports will be false positives. Testing should be reserved for people with cough and cold symptoms and objective (measurable fever). Those with no known exposure to travel should be tested using the broad URI PCR nasal swab. Swabbing is for detection and identification of specific viral nucleic acids from individuals exhibiting signs and symptoms of respiratory infection aids in the diagnosis of respiratory viral infection
We have arranged testing kits with a 24 hour turn around time for a $270 cost. If this assay (testing for 18 more common pathogens) is negative AND you persist in worsening symptoms I would then advise we test you for COVID-19. Presently we do have test kits for either scenario. We plan to evaluate and test such described cases outside. We have an outside bench and we will come to you masked and gloved to examine your chest and swab you. You will then be sent home to wait for our reports and to manage your URI protocol.
