CHI Health is giving patients more options for seeing their doctors through expanded telehealth services during the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak.
CHI says they won't let their patients who need to see their provider, such as heart patients or someone who needs frequent monitoring for diabetes, “fall through the cracks.” To combat that, CHI Health is offering telehealth as another way to see the doctor.
More than 800 CHI Health providers across Nebraska and southwest Iowa are joining together to keep patients safe at home. Telehealth providers range from primary care and behavioral providers to cardiologists, infectious disease specialists, neurologists, orthopedics and urologists.
CHI says the process is simple: at the time of your scheduled appointment, instead of going to the clinic, you can see and talk with your provider face-to-face on your computer or phone.
Primary Care Director Dr. Michael Schooff says safety is the foundation of their caring for patients and each other. “We strive to take care of our patents in the right place at the right time in the right way. Telehealth helps us do just that.”
Dr. Schooff calls the telehealth option critical because it:
- Continues routine care while limiting the need for healthy patients to come into the clinic, supporting social distancing
- Allows for treatment of acutely ill patients while keeping them at home, preventing further spread of illness
- Provides an easy way for providers to check in on patients who may have other difficulties preventing them from coming to the clinic (transportation issues, mobility issues, etc.)
Providers will be added in waves, with those in primary care among the first. Patients still have the option of seeing their providers in person. CHI says clinic staff has worked hard to separate healthy and “sick” patients:
- Chronically ill patients are encouraged to see their provider in the morning and those who are sick would visit in the afternoon.
- Each group would use separate entrances, waiting areas and exam rooms for visits.