Inside the Clinic - After the Break Edition
Each week, our Executive Director, Anne-Lise Quinn, sends out a Clinic Update to the staff. In an effort to keep our wider community updated about the happenings inside Culmore Clinic, we will be posting an annotated version of this update to our blog each week under the Inside the Clinic tag.
Dear Culmore Clinic Community,
I have some very sad news to report. Dr. Yolanda Oertal, one of Culmore Clinic’s greatest supporters, who served as a volunteer, advocate, board member, donor, and visionary, passed away yesterday. Many of you might have known Dr. Oertel and perhaps even her dear late husband, Dr. James Oertel, so I am sorry to be the bearer of such sad news and I offer my condolences to all who held her dear and will miss her terribly.
From what I know of Dr. Oertel, I believe she would be very happy knowing that Culmore Clinic is growing from strength to strength, undeterred by pandemics, and fulfilling its mission to serve with compassion any struggling neighbor who does not have access to a primary healthcare home. We will be recognizing our dear friend publicly in the coming week. More to come on that.
On that note, I hope this finds you all well and rested from our week “off” and that you are raring to go again! Many, many thanks again to the wonderful volunteers who held the fort last week, enabling some of our staff – who’ve been working long days since COVID came to town – to take a real break. Yay for you!
As you know, this week and next we have a modified patient appointment schedule so we can reboot and refresh and prepare for the fall and winter ahead. One of the big-ticket items on our agenda is putting into place our infectious disease prevention plan, per Virginia Department of Labor and Industry (VDOLI) standards for all businesses and employers across the Commonwealth. Leading that charge is our very own Barbara Weingold and I am so excited to have her bring her skills and expertise to bear in helping us think through all that is necessary to put in place in order to be compliant with those standards.
To that end, we met at the Clinic yesterday to look at how we might re-engineer the Clinic space in preparation for the safe and efficient scheduling of onsite patient appointments over the next few months. It felt so good to have something positive to work toward and know that we will have great systems in place to ensure that staff, who are able, and patients who need to see us in person, will be able to do so in confidence that every possible precaution has been taken to reduce exposure to infection.
I will, of course, keep you posted on how the onsite appointments unfold, but for now we anticipate that the first onsite appointments will be critical, though ad hoc, provider-patient appointments (those situations where providers just need to see our most medically vulnerable patients) and then flu vaccinations which will start outside but may have to move indoors, depending on the weather. To help with these and other onsite clinic services, we will be welcoming back our Marymount nursing students in the next couple of weeks. It takes a village!
Telemedicine/telehealth will, of course, continue to be the bread and butter of patient appointments for the near future and will remain a part of our new hybrid operational model, as is the case for almost every health clinic around. That means there will always be a place for all you dear souls who want to remain actively serving our patients, but cannot come onsite at this time.
In the same spirit of gratitude to all who hold fast to the mission of Culmore Clinic, I want to offer up a BIG THANK YOU to our wonderful partner and host, First Christian Church, whose reopening task force is working closely with us to make sure we can safely meet the needs of our staff and patients, as well as the VDOLI standards. What would we do without you?
Finally, a belated, but heartfelt HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Brigid Hobbs (13th) and Mary Frickel (11th). And a happy, healthy new year to all those celebrating Rosh Hashanah this week!
Onward and upward, One and All!
Anne-Lise