Remember the exam room?
The Covid-19 epidemic disrupted our long-standing clinical care routines beginning this past Spring and forced the postponing or omission of months of comprehensive visits, traditionally the foundation of effective preventive medicine.
Virtual visits (phone, FaceTime, Zoom) beginning in March fortunately proved to be highly effective for management of many chronic issues, as well as for a fair portion of intercurrent illnesses.
And in June we were allowed by the State to resume in-person checkup (preventive) visits, so we stopped falling behind. We also converted many scheduled annual checkups to virtual visits, so we at least had substantive contact and updates with most everyone who needed. We initiated many of those appointments, and members called us for others. We made real progress and hoped to get fully caught up over the winter.
Where are we now?
For now, we continue to provide in-person checkups as well as follow-up and illness visits. But the enormous surge in Covid-19 cases this fall (about 20 times the daily cases in Massachusetts as in late summer) substantially raises the risk of mutual undetected disease exposure in close exam room quarters despite prescreening and antigen testing. Even further increases in Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths are projected well into January.
We continue to evaluate the balance between the benefits and risks on in-person clinical visits. Not to mention that the Mass DPH and Governor Baker may well make a decision for all of us. We will keep you closely informed.
You may call to schedule a visit
If you feel overdue for a maintenance visit or checkup and you haven’t heard from us, please contact the admin staff to make arrangements. And if we contact you for a visit and you prefer to keep it virtual for now, that’s fine, too. We can still do a pretty good job of it with substantive video and phone visits.
Keep yourselves rigorously Covid safe
We are not likely to be back close to normal until next summer. Effective vaccines are here but they will not be in wide distribution until Q2 next year, maybe longer. We have to get through the entire winter of maximum risk.
- Wear your mask.
- Wash your hands.
- Keep physically apart from others.
- Avoid any prolonged indoor exposure other than with immediate family.
We can all do this.
