Open AccessCreating a Dedicated Pandemic Ambulatory Clinic: Lessons Learned From COVID-19
Author(s) -
Joshua Kwon,
Mary S. Hedges,
Kaedrea Jackson,
Andrew Keimig,
Dawn L. Francis
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
quality management in health care
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.401
H-Index - 34
eISSN - 1550-5154
pISSN - 1063-8628
DOI - 10.1097/qmh.0000000000000323
Subject(s) - pandemic , medicine , ambulatory care , personal protective equipment , medical emergency , covid-19 , emergency department , ambulatory , outpatient clinic , health care , emergency medicine , nursing , infectious disease (medical specialty) , disease , pathology , economics , economic growth
COVID-19 is highly infectious and the pandemic requires many adaptations to how we deliver medical care. Early in the pandemic, much of this focus was on hospital and emergency department care delivery models to ensure the safety of non-COVID-19 patients and health care workers. However, providing much needed outpatient assessments for COVID-19 patients during a pandemic is also fraught with challenges. From our review of the literature, best practices for a dedicated pandemic ambulatory outpatient clinic have not previously been described. We present a model for creating a dedicated ambulatory pandemic clinic at our institution for the acute care needs of COVID-19 patients.