An AMA checklist designed to help physicians manage the safe reopening of their practices emphasizes new precautions that must be taken to protect patients, clinicians and staff from COVID-19 as in-person care resumes or becomes more routine. A key tool for a safe reopening is prescreening patients before their arrival.
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The new AMA resource is designed to balance immediate care needed for COVID-19 while addressing patients’ other backlogged needs that have been postponed to support the physical distancing that is necessary to curb community spread of COVID-19.
Effective teletriage of patients can keep practice staff and visitors safe while putting patients on the appropriate care path as some who seek an in-person visit may be better accommodated through a telehealth virtual visit or, in more urgent cases, need to be directed to a hospital or COVID-19 testing site.
In addition to informing care decisions, the information collected from a well-designed pre-visit screening questionnaire can be part of an effort to reduce community spread of COVID-19.
Also, reaching out to patients to explain safety procedures in advance of their visit can help to alleviate patient anxiety by assuring them that the practice has protocols in place.
The AMA has developed the template for a pre-appointment patient screening script that practices can modify or use to assess patients’ potential COVID-19 symptoms or exposure ahead of entry to the office or clinic.
Patients should be told their responses will be kept confidential and will be reviewed by a practice clinician who will provide guidance regarding any adjustments to the patient’s scheduled appointment.
If patients answer “yes” to any of the questions, guidance is included on what actions to take. Here are some of the screening questions included in the script:
If patient answers “yes” to any question, their responses should be reviewed by a designated medical leader to assess whether the patient can keep the scheduled appointment. Patients will be contacted again after decision-making.
“With some physicians beginning the process of reopening their practices, this essential resource supplies them with guidance to do so while keeping patients, staff and the general public as safe as possible from a COVID-19 resurgence,” said AMA President Patrice A. Harris, MD, MA. “The AMA remains focused on ensuring the viability of physicians’ practices that have been seriously impacted by this public health crisis and will continue providing support while aggressively advocating on physicians’ and patients’ behalf.”
Physicians should also consult the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ phase 1 guide for reopening facilities to provide nonemergent, non-COVID care.
Other tools and guidance can be found at the AMA's COVID-19 resource center, which offers a library of the materials from the JAMA Network™, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization