StemCell Therapy

Adaptability in the age of COVID-19 is coming in the way of telemedicine.

Over the past several weeks, Oregon leaders have announced numerous, increasingly stringent orders around social distancing to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. Earlier this month, Gov. Kate Brown banned groups over 250. She narrowed that this week, banning groups of over 25. Hospitals and nursing care facilities have banned visitors all together.

Enter a lot more telemedicine.

The clinic will continue to provide in-person visits for newborns and for well-child checks for kids two and a half and undervisits that often include immunizations and monitoring developmental milestones that providers must do in person, COPA stated Friday. (Updated 3/21, 5:30pm: the original version of this story stated providers "can't" do those visits; that was inaccurate.)

Like other health care providers faced with supply chain disruptions, preserving PPEs is definitely a thing.

"COPA is conserving all our PPE supplies using multiple methods to ensure that our current supplies last as long as possible," Clausen wrote.

"The Oregon Veterinary Medical Examining Board issued a statement saying that says we can provide telemedicine to our patients," Maas said. "We are taking it seriously. We have already, for the last two weeks, have been anticipating a need for PPE, and conserving and recycling and reusing whenever possibleautoclaving it when we can, so we don't burn through one per patient. Because of that, we can still be open and still do the care we need for our patients."

Maas said his supplies of PPE are adequate for his team, but that they don't have a stockpile.

"I've responded to the emergency task forcefor things like anaesthesia, we will have that available for them in a time of need," he said.

"Before this throwaway society, we used to have cloth masks. We have a couple employees now doing that, who have seamstress skills."

"While telemedicine is still very much in its infancy, these new health care platforms have the potential to solve some of the most persistent problems faced by rural inhabitants," the Oregon Health Sciences University's Oregon Office of Rural Healthdetailed on its web page. Part of the office's purview is Project ECHO, which focuses not only on expanding telemedicine, but on using it to help health care providers in rural areas get the continuing education credits they need to maintain or advance their careers. "There are certainly limitations as to what telemedicine can accomplish, but for populations with limited access to health care, a little has the potential to go a long way."

Read the original:
A Pivot to Telemedicine | Local News | Bend - The Source Weekly

This entry was posted on March 22, 2020 at 7:44 pm and is filed under Veterinary Medicine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |