It is nothing short of an understatement to say that everything has been effected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Every industry imaginable, from education to travel, real estate to manufacturing, has been impacted in some capacity. Healthcare, including physical therapy, has been no exception.
The American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) recently released “Impact of COVID-19 on the Physical Therapy Profession.” This report provides some interesting insights into practice and workforce implications and impacts, telehealth, and recommendations for professionals and policymakers. You can read the full report here.
In support of and in addition to some of APTA’s ideas, we have summarized some suggestions for how to handle your physical therapy practice during COVID.
Create virtual options for all in-person interactions.
Lunch meetings with referring physicians can become hand written thank you notes. Open houses can become webinars. Telehealth can be offered to patients that cannot attend in-person appointments. Hand shakes can become air high fives.
Consider any other in person interactions that are typically part of your normal clinic operations, and pivot to an alternative that still provides the same level of service.
Provide frequent updates to employees and patients.
Any updates to your normal operations should be shared with employees and patients.
Do you have new hours? Is your waiting room closed? Are you taking temperatures upon entrance to the building?
Create a COVID update section on your website, either on a page or blog post, and make pinned posts to your social media accounts. Update your GoogleMyBusiness profile.. Share via email newsletter. Inform everyone of the new change by including this information, both written and verbally, with all appointment scheduling and reminders.
Provide these updates regularly. If nothing has changed from month to month, it is still a good idea to share the information again. This builds confidence with your patients and employees and assures them that this remains the top priority for you and your practice.
Make an emergency preparedness plan.
According to APTA’s report, “prior to the pandemic, only 30% of practices had an emergency preparedness plan in place.” This leaves practice owners, PTs, PTAs…and patients, in a state of unknown and unease. Have a plan in place for future emergencies to leave out some of the stress and guesswork in the early days and weeks after an incident.
To start off, brainstorm a few possible scenarios that could potentially require contingency planning:
- Fire, flood, or other natural disaster
- Cyber security attack
- Major unexpected financial hit (i.e., significant damage to facility not covered by insurance; economic downturn)
- Pandemic
Take your current operating procedures and envision what kind of back up plan could be realistic for each of the above scenarios. Write out a one page Plan B and one page Plan C to cover any changes that would take place for each section/department.
There are a lot of free sample emergency plans for business that you can find online and use as starting point for yours. You can also work with APT to develop a personalized emergency preparedness to cover all aspects of your business.
Maintain a list of trusted sources.
Have a list of of businesses and organizations as trusted sources to gather advice for your business, especially during unprecedented times like these.
Some sources we recommend:
- APTA (Nationally and locally)
- WebPT
- Evidence in Motion (EIM)
- MEG Business
During COVID, we also recommend the following sources:
Stay on top of news from these trusted sources on a daily basis, in both good times and bad. Some methods we recommend using to keep track of latest news from sources:
- Subscribe to email newsletters
- Follow on social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube)
- Create a Feedly account (free!)
- Track via Google Alerts
These are just a few measures you can take to help ease some of the stresses caused by COVID. By staying informed, planning ahead, and providing transparency, you can lessen some of the negative impact the pandemic has on your practice.