COVID-19 update on community care: stay home, essential services provided
Thank you everyone for implementing social distancing, increased hygiene, and working together to stop coronavirus transmission and keep our community as safe as possible. Today the Canadian Physiotherapy Association communicated their updated recommendations for clinics to help with social distancing and interrupting the spread of COVID-19, which includes scaling back services and limiting services to patients with urgent needs until March 30th.
We are in the process of reaching out to our patients with appointments and asking them to consider cancelling their appointments.
If you are in acute pain, or in an urgent recovery context, we will continue to treat you. And if you find yourself in urgent need of care, please feel welcome to reach out to us for an appointment. Right now hospitals are at risk of being overwhelmed, and we can help in some of these situations, especially with acute pain. If you have questions, please contact us.
These are difficult times and it means a lot to us that everyone is pulling together and thinking about our broader community including those folks who are more at risk to the effects of COVID-19. Stay home when possible, be kind, and look out for each other.1
What is acute pain?
If any of these are true, you should contact us:
- presence of neurological signs and symptoms,
- signs of trauma,
- signs of traumatic brain injury (TBI),
- significant pain or loss of function,
- patients requiring postoperative treatment,
- cardiorespiratory or pediatric conditions requiring sustained treatment or monitoring.
Update from Canadian Physiotherapy Association, March 16
… the CPA built three different resources on how to keep your practice and patients safe through the outbreak, intending to release them this morning; but, in merely hours, that has all become irrelevant as we see the positions of our governments shifting and taking harder stances on non-essential trips out of the home.
Based on the recommendations of the Public Health Agency of Canada and the provincial and municipal governments, the Canadian Physiotherapy Association recognizes that, in most outpatient settings, clinics should be closed to respect the social distancing protocols being rolled out across the nation. In support of the recommendations by Public Health authorities to optimize social distancing, we recommend that physiotherapy services in the community only be offered to patients with urgent needs.
Those whose care and services can be postponed, or can be provided virtually, we strongly recommend doing so until at least after March 30. We recognize that these are exceptional times that require exceptional measures aimed to reduce the spread of the virus and to reduce the demand on the health system…