Life in a Primary Care Practice during the COVID-19 Pandemic – Week 6

Follow our series highlighting the celebrations and struggles of a small, independent primary care clinic, located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Follow along with the Practice Administrator as they share good news, top priorities and needs!

Status on May 19, 2020

Good News (Accomplishments) 
It’s been a good week, it’s nice to reflect on the week and see a number of positives. 

We are thankful that we offer inhouse labs. I’ve heard colleagues mention the challenge of convincing patients (and their families) that it is safe to go to the lab for necessary draws. Since we offer inhouse phlebotomy patients feel safe.

Our outreach is working, we scheduled 37 annual wellness visits in the last week! We are starting to see a decrease in care gaps. 

We plan to continue with our current level of telemedicine services. We completed our detailed cost/benefit analysis for telemedicine we now offer those alternative appointments as part of our regular service line.  

Things have settled down enough that I feel comfortable enough to go on vacation for a few days. I am modeling a little self-care for my teammates.

Team Care (Self-Care/Support)
Daily, I individually round with each team member. This allows me to check-in with each individual team member to provide additional support and encouragement as needed.

Top Priority
PPE supplies are getting a little low. We are searching suppliers to get levels back to par. This was a lesson learned earlier in the pandemic, so we monitor this very closely.

We still continue to work on patient outreach to close gaps in care, improve our eCQMs and get our schedule back to normal. 

What we need
Permanent changes to policies regulating telemedicine; eliminating the requirement that the patient location (originating site) must be a physician’s office, allowing patients to be located in any setting during the visit, including home and not just rural areas. We also need for reimbursement to remain at or similar to current levels. 

Stay tuned for our next update!

Blog Series:

Week 1: https://www.healthteamworks.org/news/life-primary-care-practice-during-covid-19-pandemic-week-1
Week 2 and 3: https://www.healthteamworks.org/news/life-primary-care-practice-during-covid-19-pandemic-%E2%80%93-week-2-and-3
Week 4: https://www.healthteamworks.org/news/life-primary-care-practice-during-covid-19-pandemic-%E2%80%93-week-4
Week 5: https://www.healthteamworks.org/news/life-primary-care-practice-during-covid-19-pandemic-%E2%80%93-week-5
Week 6: https://www.healthteamworks.org/news/life-primary-care-practice-during-covid-19-pandemic-%E2%80%93-week-6