How to Make Your Healthcare Facility More COVID-19-Secure
Healthcare is an essential service that must always be available to the public, irrespective of the prevalence of COVID-19. But, as you might imagine, many healthcare providers are nervous about offering their services and increasing likely exposure to their employees.
As a healthcare provider, how can you overcome such challenges? It turns out by making a few temporary adjustments to how you operate, you can still provide a much-needed service to patients. Here’s what you can do to make your facility COVID-19-secure:
Embrace Telemedicine
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, your facility will likely have preferred seeing patients face-to-face. You can still provide that personal service, but it’s a wise idea to scale back such in-person appointments given the current situation.
However, that doesn’t mean you should limit the number of patients you see and treat. Instead, what you should do is embrace telemedicine practices. Telemedicine is a practice widely championed by Brad Schaeffer and Medcomp Sciences, among others.
In a nutshell, telemedicine involves seeing patients remotely using video call technology. Additionally, telemedicine can involve patients using medical devices in their homes, with healthcare providers viewing live data remotely.
Of course, there will be some occasions where you’d need to diagnose patients in-person. However, digital healthcare can be useful for an array of simple diagnostics, such as blood pressure readings.
Enforce Social Distancing
People can undoubtedly risk getting COVID-19 in enclosed spaces like healthcare facilities rather than open spaces. With that in mind, your healthcare facility should enforce social distancing to protect staff and patients.
There are many ways to achieve that goal. For example, you could close your waiting room and ask patients to wait in their cars outside the building. When you’re ready to see them, you can call their cellphones and invite them inside for their appointments.
You could also operate a one-way system throughout your facility by asking patients to leave through an emergency exit door rather than the main entrance. And when patients travel through your facility, ask that they wear a mask to protect themselves and your team.
Check Patients for COVID-19 Symptoms
Another common-sense approach to making your healthcare facility more COVID-19-secure is by checking if patients exhibit any of the main symptoms. Such checks can get conducted by a team member wearing personal protective equipment at your facility’s entrance.
Patients should confirm they haven’t got any symptoms by answering a quick questionnaire. Additionally, you could also do a temperature check on them using an infrared thermometer.
You may even ask them to take a rapid lateral flow test and have them wait in their vehicle for the results before allowing them inside your healthcare facility.
Deep-Clean Your Facility Several Times Daily
Lastly, your team can deep-clean your facility several times a day using a steam cleaner or other cleaning apparatus. The cleaning should get carried out in the medium to high-traffic areas like reception desks, halls, waiting rooms, and consultation rooms. You should be aware of Healthcare Laundry Cleaning Requirements and ensure you maintain the highest standards of cleanliness within your facility.
A strict cleaning regime will significantly decrease the likelihood of COVID-19 spreading inside your healthcare facility.
Prevention of other contagions like Legionella by usingOxyl-Pro will keep your facility clean and safe.
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