Hospital encourages community to follow COVID-19 precautions

As we move into the winter months many hospital and health systems across the country are anticipating and preparing for increases in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.

While we must continue to take the virus very seriously and help to mitigate the spread, we at Reading Hospital want to assure you that our experience from the spring has helped us better prepare to care for the fall surge of COVID-19 patients in our communities. Our physicians, nurses and caregivers are more experienced and have a deeper understanding of the disease and its process and are utilizing the latest scientific data and research to efficiently and effectively manage its symptoms.

Our facilities remain clean and safe for our patients and employees. In response to COVID-19

we deployed state-ofthe-art UVC disinfection robots at each Tower Health hospital. These robots deliver a fast and effective germicidal dose of continuous wave UVC energy floor to ceiling, killing germs and pathogens, including COVID-19.

Our additional critical safety measures include:

Strict isolation for our COVID-19 inpatients. These patients are cared for in specific areas in the medical nursing unit, the surgical nursing unit and the intensive care unit and are kept apart from other patients. Each COVID-19 patient room is cleaned by the robot upon patient discharge.

COVID-19 inpatients requiring surgery are transferred directly to the operating room and bypass the holding room. We have a designated operating room that is only used for COVID-19 patients. This room is cleaned using the terminal cleaning process and the UVC disinfection robot between each case. After surgery the patient is transferred to a private negative pressure isolation room or directly back to their nursing unit.

Non-COVID patients who require surgery are screened for COVID-19 three separate times prior to surgery.

No elective surgical procedures are being done on patients with COVID-19.

A tent has been placed adjacent to the Emergency Department to create additional capacity for the ED as an alternate care location if we experience a surge in suspected cases of flu or COVID-19. This additional assessment space will ensure that critically ill patients will continue to receive life-saving care inside our Emergency Department.

Physician practices and ancillary services are also following safety measures, including screening patients for COVID-19 symptoms, following enhanced cleaning protocols, limiting the number of patients in the waiting rooms and positioning waiting room furniture to encourage social distancing.

It is equally important to continue your regular wellness and routine care visits for important immunizations, screening tests such as mammograms or colonoscopies and the opportunity for your provider to screen for serious illnesses, if necessary. These regular interactions are critical for individuals with chronic diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure or congestive heart failure. Lack of proper care for a chronic health condition can worsen shortterm symptoms and affect your health.

The health and safety of our patients and their families, the community and our team members remains our top priority. To that end, we continue to perform temperature checks on all employees, patients and visitors, and we require everyone in our facilities to wear a mask.

We recently instituted new temperature screening at all hospital entrances. We have transitioned from handheld thermometers to new infrared thermal cameras. These cameras are a screening tool and will identify an elevated temperature. They do not save or record any personal information. This infrared technology is also used to screen all hospital employees.

In recent months our team has worked to secure larger inventories of personal protective equipment (PPE) and testing supplies to meet any increase of patients. We are very closely monitoring and managing our inventories of both to meet the needs of all our patients.

While we have implemented strict safety precautions at all Tower Health facilitates, we still need your help to mitigate the virus. Please continue to wear your mask, wash your hands with soap and water or alcohol-based sanitizer if soap is not available. It is also important to continue to practice social distancing while COVID-19 is still in our communities. Together we must take these crucial steps to help prevent the spread of the virus.

For additional information or to review Tower Health COVID-19 data please visit towerhealth.org/COVID19.

Dr. Debra Powell