Amid the recent pandemic of the Coronavirus/COVID-19, we want to once again reassure you that your health is at the forefront of our minds at The Woman’s Clinic. We want to minimize your potential exposure to this virus as well as the exposure of our employees. To do so, we will be making some unprecedented changes to the way we plan to take care of you.
We will start by adapting our schedule for the next two weeks, March 16-27th. We will be updating you by the 27th with further planning.
For OBSTETRICAL (pregnant) patients:
If you are in your third trimester, after 28 weeks gestation, we want you to keep your scheduled appointments.
For obstetrical patients earlier than 28 weeks, our nurses and doctors will be notifying you to reschedule your appointments based on your pregnancy risk factors. Some of you will need to keep your appointments while others of you may be able to, or choose to, delay your appointments by 1-4 weeks, depending on your clinical history.
- We will not be routinely rescheduling any scheduled induction or c-section at this time, though this is certainly subject to change.
- Please be aware of Baptist Hospital’s Temporary Visitors Policy: All patients admitted to the Labor and Delivery area as well as the Postpartum Unit will be limited to one visitor per day (full 24 hours). No swapping out between different visitors is currently being allowed. No exceptions are currently being allowed.
For GYNECOLOGIC patients:
If you have an upcoming wellness exam or routine gynecologic follow-up appointment (like an IUD check-up, an ultrasound appointment to follow up an ovarian cyst, a blood pressure check-up, or an appointment to follow up starting a new medication, etc.), we will be rescheduling these appointments for 4-6 weeks from now.
- If you have an issue that needs to be addressed by one of our physicians that you feel can be handled via phone call-known as telemedicine-you can request this when one of our schedulers calls you to reschedule this appointment. Your physician will call you within 24-48 hours to handle any issues that can safely be managed over the phone.
- If you need refills of your medication, we will give a courtesy refill for one month until you can come in for your appointment to further address your medical needs. A web portal message is the most effective and convenient way to contact us for this purpose. You can also call the prescription line and leave a message. You will only receive a call back if we are unable to fill your request. Please allow 48 hours to process this request due to the volume of requests we are expecting.
If you are planning to have surgery in the next 2 weeks, we will keep you notified of the hospital’s plan to move forward versus postpone elective surgeries.
If you recently had surgery and have no problems, we will postpone your postoperative exams by 2 weeks. For any issues, we want to see you. Your appointment time may be changed, but we will promptly see you if you are having a problem postoperatively.
All doctors will not be in clinic every day. Two to three physician/nurse teams will be in clinic each day. You may be asked to see another physician other than your own. Please allow that flexibility.
We will be seeing all patients while wearing masks ourselves.
To concentrate our efforts, after Monday, March 16th, we will be moving all appointments to the Jackson location and will therefore temporarily close the Madison office. Again, we will readdress reopening our Madison office by March 27th. We apologize for and understand the inconvenience this may cause for some.
If you do need to be seen, until this pandemic is under control, we will be screening for COVID-19 at our entrance by asking questions regarding the following:
- Symptoms of fever, cough, fatigue, shortness of breath
- Recent exposures or travel to high-risk areas
Anyone with a temperature greater than or equal to 100.4 and no recent surgery or potential gynecologic source of fever, UNLESS YOU ARE PREGNANT, will be asked to reschedule their appointments or be seen in the ER for evaluation, depending on symptoms. We encourage you not to come to the office if you are otherwise well.
We also encourage you to limit your exposure even if you are not working or are working from home. Students and families who have traveled on spring break are now returning and could potentially be vectors of this virus. We just do not know.
We are continuously reviewing other measures to decrease your exposure. We are considering developing a system where you can check in by phone and then be called when you are to come in for your appointment as to minimize your potential exposure by sitting in our waiting room. This system is not in place yet. Our clinic volume may not necessitate this.
Please continue to check for updates daily via email and social media as we expect our plan to evolve as this crisis continues to develop. We are here for you and want you to stay as healthy as possible. We will get through this together.