On The Beat 7/14/20 - Gastroenterology Associates of Columbus

Today on On The Beat, Dr. Ricky Johnson from Gastroenterology Associates of Columbus joins Troy to talk about how they are handling business alongside the pandemic.

Troy thompson: welcome to on the beat everyone, i'm troy thompson, joining me today of course is dr. ricky johnson from gastroenterology and associates.

Welcome to the show, my friend.

Nice to see you again.

Dr. johnston: thanks troy.

Nice to see you as well.

Troy thompson: okay, well, let's talk a little bit about updating all the audience in regards to your practice and covid- 19.

How has this affected the practice since we last spoke?

Dr. johnston: well we've started to ramp back up.

I think the last time we spoke, our volumes had dropped pretty dramatically, both because of patients fear of getting out and also because of the department of health recommendations and guidelines that had limited elective procedures for awhile.

Since then they've re- instituted allowing elective procedures.

So we resumed all of the screening type exams that we had not been doing for a couple of months.

And so we ramped back up procedural wise, we're doing close to our normal amount of volume.

Dr. johnston: we still have a few patients that are holding out because of concern, but for the most part, we're getting close to a normal functioning level.

Troy thompson: well, that's what i was, i guess, about to ask you.

You're performing all normal routine procedures now?

Dr. johnston: yep.

That's correct.

For a while we were just doing kind of urgent or semi- urgent procedures that needed evaluation or people were having symptoms that needed a more urgent evaluation.

And we had not done really any elective, just routine colon cancer screening, or follow up the people who had a history of polyps, but we've resumed.

We're doing all of that now still, just like we had been before covid hit.

We had not been doing our hemorrhoid banding for awhile, but we're actually doing that back again too.

Troy thompson: well i'm sure all our viewers would also like to know how are you protecting yourselves as well as the patients through this pandemic?

Dr. johnston: that's a good question and certainly has been our concern moving forward.

We were eager to start our procedures back.

But, we also wanted to make sure we did it in a way that was going to be safe for us, our employees, and for our patients, and so the department of health has instituted some recommendations about that.

They feel like they've recommended that anybody that's having an elective outpatient procedure needs to have covid testing prior to the exam, and so we're doing that.

We're having our patients come in about four or five days before the test and getting a covid swab, and we get that back and then make sure that it's negative.

I've actually had two patients come back positive.

They didn't know they had it and weren't having any symptoms and we postponed those procedures out for a while.

Dr. johnston: so pretesting for covid, and also everybody's wearing masks.

We wear a mask, our employees wear a mask.

We're asking the patients also to wear a mask when they come in.

Troy thompson: what happens if one of your patients has been known to have covid-19 before their procedure or have been exposed?

What are you doing about that?

Dr. johnston: well, there's not a lot of good recommendations on that.

We've got some guidelines we can follow with regards to our employees and when they can return to work.

14 days of quarantine plus make sure they're symptom free for a few days before.

Our patients, we've just sort of generally said about a month.

If you were exposed, had a high risk exposure or you were affected yourself, we're just saying, unless it's urgent, let's just wait a month and reevaluate it at that point.

Troy thompson: well, interestingly you say, unless it's urgent, what do you qualify as urgent because i would assume if i feel like i'm supposed to be coming in to see you for the operation or the procedure that would, in my mind, be considered urgent, right?

Dr. johnston: and it's going to be case specific.

There are some things that you certainly could wait a month or two on.

Screening exams in particular.

There's no urgency for those.

People who have a stable, chronic problem that we're investigating a little bit further, that could probably wait.

If somebody is having anything urgent we would just assess that at the time and make a decision.

Troy thompson: well, as always dr. ricky you give us great information.

We appreciate the time that you took with us today.

Dr. johnston: sure.

Thanks, joe.

I appreciate you having me.

Troy thompson: if you want to find out more information there it all is up on the screen.

Gastroenterology and associates.

Taking care of all your medical needs.

We'll be back after this short