Lutheran Health VP Discusses Care Changes, COVID-19 Testing
April 23, 2020 at 12:09 a.m.
Lutheran Health VP Discusses Care Changes, COVID-19 Testing
By David [email protected]
During Wednesday’s weekly press briefing, Lutheran Health Physicians/Kosciusko Medical Group Vice President Megan Martin talked specifically about what Lutheran Health Physicians and Kosciusko Community Hospital are doing during this months-long pandemic.
She said they had to “be very nimble with our staff and providers as we transitioned our care model to meet the health needs of the community members over this time. So we put several measures in place to implement how we would vantage this.”
One of those implementations was TeleHealth. It provides a way for patients to remain at home while still receiving care via a smartphone or online through their computer.
“So for patients to access that, they can just call our family physicians’ offices or their specialist’s office to get an appointment or they can go to Lutheranhealthphysicians.com to get connected,” she said.
Martin said they recognize that with COVID-19, there are still many other patients that need to be taken care of and have medical needs, so they needed to find a way to safely and effectively do that because not everyone can be treated via TeleHealth or have treatment delayed.
“So we felt it was very important we keep our physicians’ offices open to take care of those patients, so we put different measures in place,” she said, like masks for staff and social distancing in the offices.
In addition, Lutheran developed a respiratory clinic.
“The purpose for that is that we would be able to send all the patients that would be calling in or presenting with potential COVID symptoms, we would direct them to our respiratory clinic where they could be evaluated by a physician and also be able to provide COVID testing there. That way it kept all those patients out of our other offices so it’s safer for all those other patients who need to come in and be seen by a provider,” Martin said.
Additionally, she said they opened up drive-through testing through MedStat early on. That was done by Lutheran developing a Lutheran triage line for community members.
“So anybody that had, that they felt maybe they had symptoms of COVID or wasn’t quite sure what was going on, they could call this triage line and be screened,” Martin said. “And then through this screening process, they would either direct them to the drive-through at MedStat to be tested for COVID or direct them to their healthcare provider, depending on what the results of that screening were.”
That triage phone number is 260-435-5050.
“So all of those pieces together allowed us to have basically three testing sites for patients – through the respiratory clinic, through our MedStat clinics and then through the hospital,” she said.
All the testing that Lutheran does follows the Kosciusko County Health Department guidelines, with all testing done reported to the Indiana State Department of Health.
She said KCH is very well prepared from a supply standpoint and has a great supply chain ordering process, along with great COVID training and great medical team training.
“On a daily basis, our management team has a COVID-19 meeting,” Martin said, and they review new guidelines, treatments, supplies and other issues.
Staff also have daily huddles to review information.
During Wednesday’s weekly press briefing, Lutheran Health Physicians/Kosciusko Medical Group Vice President Megan Martin talked specifically about what Lutheran Health Physicians and Kosciusko Community Hospital are doing during this months-long pandemic.
She said they had to “be very nimble with our staff and providers as we transitioned our care model to meet the health needs of the community members over this time. So we put several measures in place to implement how we would vantage this.”
One of those implementations was TeleHealth. It provides a way for patients to remain at home while still receiving care via a smartphone or online through their computer.
“So for patients to access that, they can just call our family physicians’ offices or their specialist’s office to get an appointment or they can go to Lutheranhealthphysicians.com to get connected,” she said.
Martin said they recognize that with COVID-19, there are still many other patients that need to be taken care of and have medical needs, so they needed to find a way to safely and effectively do that because not everyone can be treated via TeleHealth or have treatment delayed.
“So we felt it was very important we keep our physicians’ offices open to take care of those patients, so we put different measures in place,” she said, like masks for staff and social distancing in the offices.
In addition, Lutheran developed a respiratory clinic.
“The purpose for that is that we would be able to send all the patients that would be calling in or presenting with potential COVID symptoms, we would direct them to our respiratory clinic where they could be evaluated by a physician and also be able to provide COVID testing there. That way it kept all those patients out of our other offices so it’s safer for all those other patients who need to come in and be seen by a provider,” Martin said.
Additionally, she said they opened up drive-through testing through MedStat early on. That was done by Lutheran developing a Lutheran triage line for community members.
“So anybody that had, that they felt maybe they had symptoms of COVID or wasn’t quite sure what was going on, they could call this triage line and be screened,” Martin said. “And then through this screening process, they would either direct them to the drive-through at MedStat to be tested for COVID or direct them to their healthcare provider, depending on what the results of that screening were.”
That triage phone number is 260-435-5050.
“So all of those pieces together allowed us to have basically three testing sites for patients – through the respiratory clinic, through our MedStat clinics and then through the hospital,” she said.
All the testing that Lutheran does follows the Kosciusko County Health Department guidelines, with all testing done reported to the Indiana State Department of Health.
She said KCH is very well prepared from a supply standpoint and has a great supply chain ordering process, along with great COVID training and great medical team training.
“On a daily basis, our management team has a COVID-19 meeting,” Martin said, and they review new guidelines, treatments, supplies and other issues.
Staff also have daily huddles to review information.
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