1) Patient Communication: Our appointment reminders should include an outline of the significant changes you’ve made describing what our ‘safe’ patient journey looks like. If you want us to come back to your clinic, we need to be informed of what we should expect during our visits.
2) Pre-Screening: By texting or emailing us a COVID-19 pre-screening survey, you’re signaling to us that you’re pre-screening patients in order to keep everyone safe.
3) Registration – Intake: Once we’ve arrived at your clinic, we want the ability to text or email you and to register using our phones. Give us the option to wait in our car until someone texts or emails that you’re ready to see us, and that your waiting area is clear. We certainly don’t want to stand in a socially distanced line or waiting room.
4) Patient Flow: Describe how you’ll move us from registration to the examination room or to other treatment areas. We want to know how your practice is coordinating our visit with other patient and staff movement. If there’s a treatment bottleneck, tell us how your clinic will manage patient wait times so we’re not stuck in a waiting area where we don’t feel safe.
5) Patient Capacity Management: Tell us how you’re keeping track of the number of patients in your building and in the different treatment areas. Some clinics are doing this manually, but it’s just a matter of time before patient exceptions and rerouting make those numbers inaccurate.