Corona Virus PreCautions with Dr. Jacobsen

Elective Surgery is Now Open in Main Hospitals and Outpatient Centers Unrestricted

As of Friday, March 1st elective surgery is available.

The SurgiCenter is closed Monday, May 4th, but will be open full-time after that.

If your surgery is elective and cosmetic, you can have your surgery, but you must have been COVID tested no more than seven days before your procedure or will have to be repeated. It is best to have this test performed at least three days before her procedure as it takes 48 hours to process the specimen to find out if your positive or negative.

The SurgiCenter has a resource for you to get the virus testing at St. Joseph’s outpatient surgery center at 240 West Thomas Rd., Phoenix, Arizona.

Drive around to the East side of the building on Mercy Way. 

The nurses will come out and swab you for the Covid test

 It takes two days for the result

If you have an insurance card, bring along with you.

If you call this number  602.406.3552 ahead of time, they will help you set up the testing and make it easy for you.

Bring your INS card with you

There is no charge for this test. 

Visits to Dr. J’s Office:

At our office in the clinic, we are following strict precautions to keep all of our patients and our staff safe.

We will remain open in our office as long as it remains safe for everyone.

Our environment is clean and sanitized regularly.  We have hand sanitizer free to use as soon as you arrive.  We ask that you sanitize yourself before you arrive.

We welcome all of our patients to come to see us safely with the following precautions that you are likely already familiar with.

We are spacing the appointments so that the waiting room will be sparsely filled with other patients.

We all are familiar with social distancing.

Wearing a mask is at your prerogative.

If you are ill, please do not come to our office until a physician clears you.

For your safety, you can elect to come and sign in at the desk and then wait in your car until your appointment. Once your exam room is ready, and we will call you when you can come directly to your exam room to see Dr. Jacobsen without having to wait in the waiting room with other patients.

We recommend that you come to Dr. Jacobsen’s office with no more than one other person and preferably alone or leave your family in the car.  Fortunately, it is not too hot right now, and your family should be comfortable for your family to stay in the car if they are not young children.

We have a simple screening process to ensure that it safe for you to come to the office.  You are likely familiar with these common questions, which include.

  1. Have you traveled from out of the country in the last 14 days?
  2. Do you feel ill feverish or have a cough?
  3. Have you been exposed to anybody who then feels ill feverish and has a cough recently?
  4. Have you been exposed to anybody that is known to have Coronavirus colonization?

If you need a follow-up visit and may not be necessary to come to our office as you can send us photographs and ask us questions online and will get right back to www.askasecurequestion.com This site is a secure HIPPA site that protects your privacy entirely.

We continue to perform procedures in our office for our patients in a private room just with Dr. Jacobsen.

So any procedure that can be done with local anesthesia [numbing] medicine we can do for you without delay!

If you need surgery and an anesthesiologist there are limitations nowbut they have recently changed as of May 1st, according to Governor Ducey’s new executive order.

The surgical center that Dr. Jacobsen works at is St. Joseph’s Hospital Outpatient Surgery Center. 

They have employed very strict guidelines about social distancing and continual cleaning of their surgical environment. 

No employees are allowed that at any of the positive symptoms listed above. 

No doctors are allowed at with any of the above-listed symptoms. 

None of the nursing staff is allowed with any of the above-listed symptoms. 

All families are restricted and screened for fever.

Below are listed the new policies at St. Joseph’s Hospital Outpatient Surgery Center.

  • Keep the family members spread out as much as possible in our lobby with spacing in between other family members 
  • Limiting the amount of family to 1 member per individual having surgery to help lessen the number of people in the lobby
  • Doing hourly rounding to disinfect the lobby tables and chair rails, as well as common touch areas like door handles, ink pens, and patient charts
  • Staff are diligently washing and sanitizing their hands after each patient interaction

Dr. Jacobsen feels the surgery center is quite safe, and use should have no fear of having your surgery there.

We will continue to adjust our plan for all of our patients and our staff as this terrible situation evolves and as we receive further instructions from our government leadership.

Below are links to the CDC Guidelines and President Trump’s Response Team’s recommendations to us all.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/03.16.20_coronavirus-guidance_8.5x11_315PM.pdf

 

Thank you, Dr. Jacobsen