Hi
We have some staff requesting for covid 19 testing periodically of out staff. We screen staff by questionnaire and temp and we dont do testing in the office of patients currently. Are practices doong random covid Testing of staff. And if so, do they have to wait for results or since its random and they are healthcare workers they should still be able to work since theoretically asymptomatic. Im not sure if staff doesnt trust their coworkers or other offices jave implemented random testing?
I would not do random testing. If they are not symptomatic and have no known exposure there is no need for it. They should be masking all the time anyway. Yes, as an asymptomatic HCP you can come to work even with exposure provided you wear a mask and monitor yourself for symptoms. We do check everyone’s temp twice a day as we are in an area of widespread community transmission. Random testing, in my opinion, is a misuse of resources. It is difficult enough to get symptomatic people tested so we need all the swabs we can have for those who are ill.
No random testing here. Temp checks 4 times a day. We did discuss with the staff during our first COVID 19 meeting that if ill and unable to secure testing/PCP appointment, we will authorize testing to be performed at our office. They were asked to make themselves a patient chart in the EMR so that this information is easily accessible for the lab’s demographic and billing needs.
As colleges have found out, there are many asymptomatic COVID positives. We are thinking of doing about 3 tests in each of our office a week (one front desk, one clinical, one provider). We have not done them yet. Part of this is to ensure our patients that we are doing everything possible to keep them safe from us (external customers). The other part is to ensure our staff as well (internal customers). What we have found is that our staff are careful around patients, but not so careful around each other. Because of this, I think that our staff are much more likely to get COVID from a co-worker than a patient. We have had discussions about this and we will probably start October 1st.