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Introduction: Better health begins at Tidelands Health, dedicated to keeping the communities we serve healthy and active. That's why we're proud to present our podcast series Better Health Radio brought to you by Tidelands Health. Here's Bill Klaproth.

Bill Klaproth: Tidelands Health, the region's largest healthcare provider is implementing enhanced safety protocols at each of its more than 60 care locations to help protect and reassure patients, including those whose care may have been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. So let's learn more about the safe in our care initiative with Gayle Resetar, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Tidelands Health. Gayle, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it. So first off, can you tell us what is the safe in our care initiative?

Gayle Resetar: Well, at Tideland's Health we see a number of patients across our whole communities, thousands of visits every year. And as we know with COVID-19 we've seen a lot of delay in routine health and maintenance visits. A lot of delay in elective surgeries or different procedures that folks need to maintain their health and wellness. And so it's very important that we create some sense of normalcy and opportunity for people to get back into the healthcare system and resume some of the normal health and wellness maintenance that they need to keep healthy lifestyles. At Tidelands Health, we're taking a lot of extra precautions to make sure that you're confident about that as you embark on seeing your providers, getting your exams, getting your annual physicals, having that surgery that you might've been able to put off for a period of time, that is important for you to undertake. We want to raise the confidence in our community and assure that you know that we're taking all the precautions we need to do to make sure that while you're here in our care, that you are safe and our care and that you can feel confident to resume your health and wellness activities.

Host: I love this initiative. I think it's so good as we all search for that normalcy and you're correct, people have been delaying care and we want people to know that it is safe to return for their health needs. So Gayle, let's look at each one of these protocols individually first. Can you tell us about safe scheduling?

Gayle Resetar: Well, a number of things will happen relative to scheduling. First, there'll be various reminder calls about things like remember to wear face covering when you come to your appointment. We'll do different things behind the scenes. Like if you're having a an imaging exam, say you come in for an MRI, we are creating some time between each one of those appointments for appropriate cleaning and turnover of the rooms that we have. And again, normally we would have done that as well, but there's additional precautions and it keeps patients from really stacking up. We're also trying to make sure that when they come in for appointments that we're doing everything we can to collect as much information on the phone prior to the appointment. Again, that's a good practice normally as well. So that there's information exchange that has to happen when the patient arrives for their appointment and we're all ready for their appointment. But again, we want to have it as contactless as possible and possibly if we can avoid that clipboard and pen of course if that's required and if there are manual pieces of information that you're just unable to do online in advance or over the phone in advance, then of course there'll be various procedures to assure that those are one time use and disinfected in between each patient.

Host: Okay. That's really good to know Gayle, and of course very important. So can you talk to us about safe care navigators?

Gayle Resetar: Well, that's really one of the, one of the more exciting things that we've initiated, we have 60 locations across our region that we provide care and as many folks know there are a number of screening procedures for COVID-19 or really just unhealthy health status. Temperature taking has become relatively common in all of our locations, so we've oriented and trained all of the locations to have a safe care navigator. That navigator will help answer questions for you. They'll provide you with hand sanitizer. They will probably take your temperature and maybe even ask you some COVID-19 specific symptom questions. As we all know, that symptom list of potential COVID symptoms has continued to expand. So the interview of the patient for screening is probably more valuable than the test itself right now in terms of trying to make sure that we help identify right away if you are potentially a candidate for testing, but we will also assure that you have face covering. We want you to bring your own face covering, we want you to make sure that that's something you have easily accessible in your car for trips to the grocery store, the pharmacy and various other areas that are requiring face covering. But we certainly want you to remember to bring it for your appointment as well. Now if somebody doesn't have face covering, we'll provide it, but of course we're all still on conservation mode, so you're safe care navigator will be encouraging you if you have face covering to wear it yourself and of course we'll be providing temperature and screening questions that the safe net navigators will initiate.

Host: Just another really good step to ensure safety. And then how about safe check in and check out?

Gayle Resetar: So again, many of those things will be things like social distancing zones. You're seeing those in the grocery stores and other places, so specific areas where people are queuing up in line or queuing up behind one another. Trying to keep that six foot safe distance. And so you'll see those designated as that occurs in different areas, whether it's checking in or checking out to make sure that that occurs. Contactless procedures will also be in effect there. As well we'll institute, and are in the process now of installing Plexiglas safety shields between the checkout receptionist and the patients and or family members to try to create a safe distance there between both the patient and our staff and check in and check out procedures.

Host: Okay. And then how about safe lobbies?

Gayle Resetar: Well, as many locations are finding, we want to try to reorganize our lobbies just a bit and making sure that folks aren't sitting on top of one another. Many of our areas will have chairs noted that we want to skip every other seat or maybe every two seats depending on what the lobby looks like and the layout. Again, in 60 locations, there are a lot of different configurations of our lobbies, but what we're making sure we do is create a nice safe distance of those who are waiting in our lobbies. We want to make sure that if, if you're the patient that we're getting you back to your exam as quickly as possible and really limiting the time in our lobbies, but many times the family member or the driver or somebody that came with you might be in those lobbies for an extended period of time. The safe navigators will also be making sure we're maintaining a clean environment where there'll be disinfecting over and over chair arms, elevator buttons, door handles, tables and chairs, etcetera. We've also removed all the reading materials from our lobbies and again, it's bring your own books so to speak, and many of our areas, because again, we want to reduce the number of touches. We want to eliminate the high touch scenarios where people are transferring things from one to another and again where those areas can't be removed like a door handle or an elevator button. We're going to routinely clean those areas in between every patient

Host: And everybody is asking questions about those things. Door handles, elevator buttons, chairs, all those high touch areas. So that's good to hear. So speaking of high touch areas, talk to us about safe hands.

Gayle Resetar: Well interestingly washing your hands is probably the most important thing anyone will do in even normal flu season, good hand hygiene is paramount to good health. In healthcare we've tended to focus very much on our staff and they're the initiatives around safe hands and clean hands and hand hygiene. It's a been a big focus of healthcare for years and there's a lot of focus on our staff. One of the things we're doing in our safe and our care campaign is really trying to extend that safe hand hygiene, the safe hand hygiene initiatives onto our patients as well. It's just as important for the patient that comes in to get some hand sanitizer as they walk in the door. Our clinical staff sort of know the strategy of gel in and gel out of maybe exam rooms. And we're going to invite our patients to use hand sanitizer on the way into the exam room and hand sanitizer on the way out of the exam room. Again, looking for those areas where we can expand what is a routine campaign in healthcare to encourage really good hand hygiene and we're going to spread that to all of the patients we encounter throughout the organization.

Host: Again, another important initiative and then how about safe exam rooms.

Gayle Resetar: This really relates back to some of the safe scheduling and again making sure that patients are using hand sanitizer. Going in and out of exam rooms will be one of the initiatives, but also again, cleaning between every patient. Routinely, patient rooms are cleaned between each patient, but there'll be an extra level of precaution and because of our safe scheduling initiative, we'll create time for the staff to turn over that room and assure that that we have an opportunity for some extra time to have enhanced cleaning between every patient encounter.

Host: And I appreciate how thorough this list is. One that I hadn't thought about. Safe belongings. Tell us about that.

Gayle Resetar: Yes, well women, we tend to put our purses on the floors, on chairs, on lots of different surfaces, counters. It's not uncommon to be looking for someplace to set your purse, whether you're in a bathroom or anything, and in some cases if you are in an exam that requires you to change out of your clothing, even if it's just a mammography. Many times patients are removing some of their clothing and putting on a gown for their exam. We want to create an opportunity for you to put those in a clean, fresh bag instead of folding them over a chair or hanging them on a door or maybe sitting them in the floor. We want to create that opportunity for you to keep those things safe and free from any kind of germs that might be on floors and other surfaces that accumulate through the course of the day on people's shoes and things like that. So we're going to be providing patients with an opportunity to use it if they need it. Not every patient will need that. And of course in many areas you don't disrobe or change your clothes, but in the ones that you do, or in the cases where you have a pocket book, you don't want to sit on the floor. We'll have these available in all of our locations to really help assure that you don't leave with setting your purse or your clothing on the floor or a chair or a counter.

Host: Well, it's great to know you're thinking of all of these different things in ways that people interact when they come in for an exam to see the Doctor. I think it's great. And then how about safe visits?

Gayle Resetar: Well, one of the exciting things that's come out of the COVID-19 crisis is a really resurgence of the utilization of televisits. And eHealth visits. You're seeing both payers recognize the importance of these. Many insurance companies are recognizing that those are covered services. We're seeing more and more use of those visits. We have the traditional ones where someone can just download an app on their phone and create an evisit. But we also have them for our own specific patients and are scheduling many of them where it's more appropriate if you're a high risk patient or you're a patient that doesn't need to come in but needs an encounter and discussion with the physician then an evisit might be appropriate you. So we have one of our proceduralist areas, for example, is actively using this for follow-ups, where they don't necessarily need to see you in the office, but they need an encounter that's real time synchronized video encounter. And we're offering those in many cases, even encouraging those. It's been a really exciting thing for healthcare because this has been around for a while, but the utilization of it, it has skyrocketed. So we're very excited to have that available to all of our patients, that if it's appropriate and if it's appropriate for the type of encounter that you need and each visit may be best for you to allow you to stay at home and still see your provider.

Host: Well, telehealth is a wonderful option and very convenient during times like these. So lastly, if you could wrap this up for us, Gayle, tell us why people should not delay care.

Gayle Resetar: Well, as we all know, preventative services and early detection are key to long-term good health and we have concern. Our providers have concern that after a few months of delaying certain care, delaying certain follow-up appointments or annual physical exams, those have long-term implications. And certainly we all want to be safe from COVID-19 we want to keep the spread of COVID-19 down in our communities. But there's also the cost associated with avoiding the care or not getting screenings or not having an early detection of an early cancer or another kind of chronic condition that's not being well managed. All of those things can have a lot of downstream implications for our communities. We serve a lot of folks that are retired and older in our community as a resort area along the coast and it's very important for folks to keep up with their required screenings or testing’s. All of our cancer patients leave our cancer program with a survivorship program that would say these are the screenings that you need over the course of the next five years.

You might need a particular imaging exam every six months. You may be cured from your cancer, but you still have a lot of maintenance and screening you need to do, so it's very important for early detection and early identification of illness or chronic condition or some other more serious condition that can be identified. We know that we've seen less utilization during this time in our emergency departments and in our physician practices. Even though things haven't been completely closed, the utilization is way down because people have heated the stay at home orders, but now is the time to put your care back into your own hands and assure that you're catching those things that need to be cut early, that can allow you to have a really nice recovery and maintain your health. Those are as important as avoiding the spread of COVID and so we want to make sure that you can do both. Avoid spread of COVID and still have a lot of nice safe practices. I get back to some degree of normalcy and taking of your own health and wellness.

Host: I like how you said that it's time to put your care back into your own hands and you should feel secure and at ease with the safe and our care initiative at Tidelands Health. Gayle, thank you so much for your time. This has really been informative. Thank you again.

Gayle Resetar: Thank you very much.

Host: That's Gayle Resetar and to learn more about the safe and our care initiative, please visit Tidelandshealth.org and please call 1-866-TIDELANDS to make an appointment with a Tidelands Health physician. And if you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social channels and check out our full podcast library for topics of interest to you. This is Better Health Radio. I'm Bill Klaproth. Thanks for listening.