GREAT FALLS — You have probably seen extra checkpoints before you go into a medical office for your appointment, where they ask you some questions about recent travel and symptoms followed by a temperature check.
We spoke with Michelle Gibbons, the practice manager at the Central Montana Heart & Vascular Institute in Great Falls, and she tells us this will be a need for a while.
"It's affected us in different ways. March and April, we definitely took a dip in our patient load, and then come May everything ramped back up again, we've had to change our staffing based on needing to screen patients coming in the office. You have to have an extra person who can do that who can sit outside the door, all hours of the day, and catch all of the patients whether they're just walking into drop something off or pick up a prescription or whatever the case may be. They have to get their temperature checked and get screened if they've done any travel," says Gibbons.
She explains this is set up to help keep patients safe before they enter the office.
"So keeping patients that may not be as healthy or keeping staff that may not be as healthy, getting them screened right at the door before they come in, alleviates the possibility of effect infecting more people as they come through the office stores," says Gibbons.
They aren't a regular office; they have to see patients in-person to complete the job.
"You know, patients do have to come into the office or cardiology office and so they cannot. We have to be able to listen to their heart, and we have to be able to look at their legs and see what's going on with them. So for that reason, we've had to run full staff. You can't. We can't have people missing. We do try and do tele visits as much as possible for some patients who maybe aren't having a current issue. Says Gibbons.
She tells us COVID-19 won't be leaving anytime soon. "At some point, you have to be seen. And so you're going to have to come in and do some of these things. People are going to ramp back up, and you're going to see staffing issues as patients or staff start to get affected or may have been exposed to their quarantining, leaving your office scrambling for more work. So I guess, in my opinion, I feel like the workforce is going to ramp back up."
