Cook: Our Clean Clinic Promise
This article first appeared in the Vail Daily on May 4, 2020
As the community’s health care system, Vail Health is committed to providing a safe environment for people to seek medical care across our 13 locations in Eagle and Summit counties. As we reopen our services and facilities to patients and their families, we are committed to ensuring every environment within our walls is clean, safe and designed to prevent the spread of infection.
This has always been a top priority, but we are now intensifying the effort with our Vail Health Clean Clinic Promise. This is a promise that every one of our 1,287 local employees across all service lines is making to one another and the community.
On April 20, across Vail Health and Colorado Mountain Medical, we began seeing patients again in person for wellness exams, which are an important annual check-up focused on preventative care, including essential bloodwork. We are now opening our other services for in-person visits like primary care and family medicine, specialty care like cardiology and dermatology, imaging, elective surgeries and physical therapy at Howard Head Sports Medicine.
Additionally, as we continue cancer treatment at Shaw Cancer Center, it is important that screening for cancer continues. Cancer does not stop because there is a pandemic, and it is just as important now as any other time to catch cancer early. Two regular cancer screenings you should never skip are your mammogram and colonoscopy.
Across our entire organization, our teams are taking the following precautions to create an incredibly clean health care environment. Some of these do require action by patients, and you might be asked to adhere to additional precautions at specific locations, such as Shaw Cancer Center, Howard Head Sports Medicine, and for surgeries.
Vail Health Clean Clinic Promise
- All staff are required to wear a mask.
- All patients and visitors are screened for COVID-19 symptoms.
- All patients and visitors must wear a mask while present in the facility.
- Only one visitor per patient in the hospital, to decrease traffic.
- Removal of commonly touched items, like magazines.
- Make every effort to provide for comfortable social distancing.
- Surgical patients are screened three times prior to arrival.
- All of our disinfectants are approved for use against human coronaviruses.
- Equipment used with a patient is thoroughly disinfected between use.
- Additional cleaning and disinfection of high touch surfaces.
- Provide ample hand sanitizer and adopt increased handwashing standards.
- Staff are not permitted to work with any COVID-19 symptoms.
- Our cafés serve grab-and-go items and menu options that reduce the risk of exposure.
- Establish Edwards Medical Campus as a well-campus and CMM Avon a well-clinic with no COVID-19 patients.
- Maintain separate, isolated COVID-19 patient areas in our CMM Vail and Eagle locations, and Vail Health Avon Urgent Care.
We thank you in advance for your cooperation, and please know that the Vail Health Clean Clinic Promise is intended to help you feel more comfortable to seek the necessary care you and your family deserve. Learn more about our Clean Clinic Promise at http://www.vailhealth.org/clean.
Will Cook is the president and CEO of Vail Health.