Many practices are pivoting to telehealth during the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE), but what happens when a patient must be seen in person for treatment?
Javery Pain Institute in Grand Rapids, Mich., is using telehealth to treat patients whenever possible, explains billing manager Mary Klumpstra, ACS-PM. However, the practice continues to provide in-person care to patients who have an urgent need. “Only those patients who feel they cannot do without their treatment and who actually state they would otherwise go to [the emergency department], are being seen.”
The practice has posted signs about COVID-19 in the lobby and on the building’s outside doors, installed more hand sanitizer dispensers, “and of course, the essentials of disinfecting all areas has been ramped up considerably,” Klumpstra says.
The office screens all patients before they come to the office “and the details of such are being documented within the provider notes for the appointments,” Klumpstra says. A clinician checks each patient’s temperature “when they are called from the lobby but before they enter the hallway to the exam and/or procedure rooms.”
The practice enforces the six-foot rule and restricts access to the building. “Patients are instructed to stand at least [six feet] away from the next patient and this is being very closely monitored,” Klumpstra says. People who come with a patient to the practice are not allowed in. “All drivers and any accompanying people with the patient must wait in their vehicles,” Klumpstra adds.
Note: Klumpstra’s comments are part of a longer article that will appear in the
Anesthesia & Pain Coder’s Pink Sheet, a monthly specialty newsletter that is published by DecisionHealth, the publisher of
Part B News.