{"id":6688,"date":"2021-05-04T09:48:18","date_gmt":"2021-05-04T13:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/?p=6688"},"modified":"2025-08-24T12:52:16","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T16:52:16","slug":"clinic-issues-during-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/2021\/05\/04\/clinic-issues-during-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Clinic Issues During COVID-19"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0During the COVID crisis, what were clinics and their patients going through? Looking\u00a0<\/span>from the inside out helps everyone see what the staff were going through.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Sitting down with a clinic supervisor can answer some of the issues the staff were facing.\u00a0<\/span>Clinic supervisor Leah Torgerson shared, \u201cWe were so confused because no protocols were in\u00a0<\/span>place when it all started. We had to make them up as we went along. Who were we going to see\u00a0<\/span>at the clinics or the hospitals? We had protective equipment, but those ran out quickly. Our\u00a0<\/span>suppliers were deluged with requests, so getting more supplies became an immediate problem.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>These were some of the problems that the local clinics were facing.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Clinic lines, 2021.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Administrators started to react to the virus when they realized that they were dealing with\u00a0<\/span>an epidemic. Torgerson went on to say, \u201cThe health care organization that runs our clinic met\u00a0<\/span>with all supervisors to consolidate services, which meant closing some of the clinics and directing our patients to hospitals and to certain clinics that remained open. This meant that some of our non-medical staff were furloughed for a time and an overload of work for the medical teams. Although it seemed like a good idea at first to furlough non-medical staff, it turned into a\u00a0<\/span>paperwork nightmare shortly after it was implemented because medical staff spent a great deal of\u00a0<\/span>their time filling out medical and insurance paperwork. Along with the normal paperwork, the\u00a0<\/span>government wanted additional paperwork, completed with each suspected and actual case of\u00a0<\/span>COVID. \u201c<\/span>Along with the COVID caseload, what happened to the normal medical cases that clinics\u00a0<\/span>handle? That part of the COVID crisis went largely ignored. Patients with other non-emergency\u00a0<\/span>medical appointments were told to wait until clinics could catch up with the unexpected overload\u00a0<\/span>of COVID appointments. \u201cWe really worried about our regular patients during the crisis. When we realized that COVID was not going to be an overnight cure, we decided to reach out to our\u00a0<\/span>regular patients to make sure that their ongoing medical issues were not becoming more serious\u00a0<\/span>issues,\u201d Torgerson said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Clinic patient Teri Ward shared, \u201cI really began to worry about my ongoing medical\u00a0<\/span>issues during the COVID crisis. Getting the COVID virus worried me a lot because I have many\u00a0<\/span>of the medical conditions that put me in the high-risk categories. But beyond the fear of COVID\u00a0<\/span>was my ongoing medical issues. I was having a difficult time getting an appointment for my\u00a0<\/span>health issues. It wasn\u2019t until many of the COVID protocols were in place that I was able to see\u00a0<\/span>my doctors for my existing medical issues. That took away a lot of the stress that I had during\u00a0<\/span>COVID.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Everyone has been dealing with the stress of COVID but those with existing medical <\/span>conditions have had to be concerned with contracting the COVID virus as well as the lack of\u00a0<\/span>attention to their existing medical conditions.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0During the COVID crisis, what were clinics and their patients going through? Looking\u00a0from the inside out helps everyone see what the staff were going through. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Sitting down with a clinic supervisor can answer some of the issues the staff were facing.\u00a0Clinic supervisor Leah Torgerson shared, \u201cWe were so confused because no protocols were in\u00a0place when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7381],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6688"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8256,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6688\/revisions\/8256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}