Darren Ross- Director Physica
Operating three clinics with over 25 physios during the COVID pandemic has been a challenging and stressful experience, to say the least.
When the pandemic first hit Australia in March, the first thing we did was to assess our clinic hygiene to ensure our patients had the safest environment to attend for therapy. If you asked me to rate our clinics' hygiene systems before this, I would have rated it as a 9/10. I thought that the changes we would have made would have been small to take it to the 10/10 we strived for to get through operating during COVID.
When I look back, I would now rate that a 6/10. This, despite the modern, clean facilities we operate in.
On reviewing the key areas that we changed were:
- Removing all linen from beds, face areas and pillows. Providing wipe down surfaces for all patient contact areas was essential. The Clinic Armour products have been integral to this across the 25 treatment rooms.
- Washing all beds/pillows and surfaces including all equipment used between clients with a high- grade antimicrobial and anti-bacterial disinfectant.
- Use of hand sanitisation for all clients on entering and exiting the building.
- Temperature checks started for us in early April and gave confidence to our clients that we were screening.
- We went cashless well before all other stores and implemented online integration of our practice management system with both stripe and Medipass for remote pay.
- Allowed our clients to wait in their cars or off-site prior to their appointments
- Distancing chairs approx 2 m apart and removing all contact surfaces such as stock and magazines from the waiting room.
- We educated our clients through email and SMS their role in cleaning and hygiene.
We now have confidence that these and the many more systems we added in will remain in place. The addition of the Clinic Armour covers have been one fo the driving factors in "patient confidence" They ensure easy, quick full cleaning of the bed avoiding any of the gaping holes or possible areas of contamination. Promoting them as having hospital-grade quality was a great marketing slant for our organisation.