The SarS-CoV-2 Pandemic is undoubtedly far from over, but the push to “reopen” in most states is high. Even though the reopening of the country will undoubtedly have an impact on new cases and Covid-19 related deaths, some well placed procedures may help minimize this potential impact.
While pharmacies were deemed essential, and not forced to close doors, we decided to close our lobby back in March and exclusively service our customers using curbside service and delivery to protect both our patients and our staff. Now, with non-essential businesses being allowed to reopen, we also opened our doors last week. For the first time in over 2 months we are willingly allowing patients back into our practice. Restaurants and other businesses in my area have occupancy restrictions placed on them in order to reopen. We are not constrained in this manner, but the concept certainly has merit.
Unlike a restaurant, we don’t have a host or hostess acting as a gate keeper. We did not desire to post store staff at our door in a similar fashion so we looked for another mechanism to control our occupancy. We ultimately decided to put a traffic light at our door (see the Featured Image at the top). We coupled the signal with signage outside our store to explain the procedures.
Our desire was to be able to limit the potential spread of the virus. We hope to accomplish this by limiting the number of patients allowed in any given area of our practice at any time. We have chosen to allow one person to enter the store each time the light is green. Our staff can control the light from the prescription department. If we bring a patient into our clinical offices for a prolonged encounter, the light can used to admit another person to the lobby for general pickup.
This method works well for a small independent store with a limited front end. In fact, our front end is not accessible to our patients, with fixtures moved to create a single aisle to the register. Patients cannot shop our store. The stoplight concept would not work well in a store with a large front end or other departments without further modifications to procedures being made.
The concept has worked well for us, though there was a learning curve. It took our staff several days to get into the habit of changing the light when someone entered or left. I have also had to return to the store after locking at the end of the day up to turn the light From GREEN back to RED.
Not everyone coming to our practice took time to fully read the signs, and we have had a few traffic violations. We have not made it a practice to issue tickets, though. Most of our violations have only received verbal warnings from the store police. Also, as we expected, we are still doing a brisk curbside business, and our delivery volume has not subsided.
Overall, we feel that this method has worked well for us, and our patients have not presented us with negative feedback to date. Having patients back inside the store, albeit in controlled doses, has been refreshing. It gives us a taste of normalcy, though the face masks and plexiglass partitions still hint that things are far from returning to normal. But we are back to making every encounter, count again. For now, though, just one person at a time!
