VICENZA, Italy (April 15, 2020) - Throughout the past weeks, in the race to defeat COVID-19, hospitals and clinics have had to implement particular precautions.
Alongside other Army medical facilities across Europe, the Vicenza Health Clinic and the medical team have worked hard since the beginning of the pandemic to apply the appropriate safety precautions in order to avoid the spread of the virus.
As part of these precautions, some measures have been implemented to maximize physical distancing.
"We screen everyone prior to entering the clinic for signs of infection, such as fever, cough, congestion, sore throat," said Lt. Col. Joe Matthews, commander of Vicenza Army Health Clinic.
"The Dental Clinic staff assist the Health Clinic. This decreases the chances of sick patients entering the clinic and spreading infection to other patients or staff."
Matthews said that they also decreased services including no routine or non-essential services in order to reduce the amount of people going through the clinic.
"We have transitioned to appointment only to ensure that we avoid too many people in waiting rooms," he added.
Another measure is increasing telehealth services.
"We are maximizing what we do remotely; if we can keep patients from having to come into contact with anyone. We are using this in primary care for follow-up, medication refills, and periodic health assessments. We also use this frequently with behavioral health."
Matthews also emphasized how in the past three weeks the pharmacy has been serving patients via walk-up and drive-through with the purpose of decreasing the exposure of patients to staff and other patients.
"The drive-through pharmacy has been received very well," said Maj. Ezella Washington, the center’s chief medical officer. "It eliminates the need for patients, to include expectant mothers, to come into the clinic to pick up medications. Patients can receive their medications from the comfort and safety of their own cars," she added.
During this time, the clinical team, led by Washington, has been working with International SOS, TRICARE, and San Bortolo Hospital to obtain up-to-the-minute information about host nation facility capabilities and options for the community; this includes working with Army Community Service to establish the OB Working Group focused on providing information to expecting mothers.
Other changes within the clinic have also affected the ways that the staff members work.
"More people are teleworking," said Matthews, "we are also alternating schedules and separating primary care teams to minimize the number of people they contact."
As regards the implemented measures in relation to the evaluation and treatment of potential COVID-19 patients, there is the establishment of the Acute Respiratory Clinic, which is located at the back of the clinic with a separate entrance to deliberately separate the ill from healthy patients.
"We have a dedicated team that runs the ARC. They have gone through training to properly don and doff protective equipment while evaluating and testing these patients.”
With the aim of obtaining test results quickly, Vicenza Health Clinic established testing options at both San Bortolo Hospital and Landstuhl Regional Medical Center by using overnight shipping and collaborating with the Navy to use aircraft to send samples to LRMC.
"We are continuing to seek out and request other methods for testing including a system to allow limited in-house testing with results in less than two hours; this is a new system that required additional training and credentialing; the lab team worked several nights and over a weekend to get it up and running as fast as possible," explained Matthews.
According to Matthews, it has been a teamwork effort and specific parts of the clinic worked long hours with very few days off to support all the clinics activities.
"The Logistic team has worked from obtaining medical supplies, personal protective equipment and medications for the contingency plans, to obtaining and shipping testing specimens; the Army Public Health Nurses assisted Lt. Col. Kelley Togiola, deputy commander for Nursing, in her role as the Public Health Emergency Officer," explained Matthews.
During the past seven weeks, several Virtual COVID-19 Town Halls were held by garrison leadership through Facebook Live to provide updates to the community and answer multiple questions that a crisis situation entails.
During one of them, U.S. Army Africa Commanding General Maj. Gen. Roger L. Cloutier Jr. said, "I want to thank our extraordinary team of medical professionals and first responders here at Vicenza Health Clinic and over at San Bortolo. They are really the heroes in this fight. We need to do everything we can to support them and help reduce the number of patients that we treat.”
| Date Taken: | 04.15.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 04.20.2020 08:27 |
| Story ID: | 367808 |
| Location: | IT |
| Web Views: | 114 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Vicenza Health Clinic takes necessary measures during COVID-19, by Laura Kreider, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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