COVID-19
Ensuring safety of others
To promote social distancing, we are offering telemedicine services for those who are hesitant to come to our offices, as well as allowing patients who do come to the office to wait in their cars.
We are limiting our visitors to one guardian per patient. Depending on each office’s layout, we are separating patients sitting in our lobby as much as possible.
All of our offices are always held to a high standard of hygiene and safety and we are following CDC guidelines, sanitizing our equipment, and cleaning our exam rooms thoroughly during business hours and again overnight.
We have screening protocols in place starting at our front door with signs to direct patients to immediately speak with our front desk staff if they meet any of the screening criteria. Our exam rooms are kept closed at all times to reduce the spread of germs.
Types of COVID 19 offered PCR/nasal swab test
Will tell you if you currently have COVID-19. A person with symptoms of COVID-19 is a candidate for this test. The results will come back either positive or negative. There is up to a 30% chance that the test may be falsely negative. Therefore, a negative test does not eliminate the possibility that you currently have the infection or that you had the infection in the past.
We also offer the IgG antibody test. An antibody is a marker in the blood that indicates the body’s immune reaction to an infection. This test requires a blood sample drawn from a vein. It will determine if your body has already built up antibodies to the virus that causes COVID-19.
If you believe you may have had COVID-19 and no longer have symptoms or believe you have had exposure without any symptoms, then you are a candidate for the antibody test.
On rare occasions, the antibody test may be falsely negative, but that most often occurs if your infection occurred less than 21 days before your blood was drawn. If you currently have symptoms and feel ill, you should not get an antibody test and would be better served by a nasal swab test. We are learning more about this virus every day, and while the medical community is hopeful that these antibodies will help protect against future infection, we don’t yet know if it gives immunity or how long immunity would last. You should continue to follow the recommendations from your state/place of work in regard to social distancing, masking, and good hand washing.