The providers and staff here at River View Pediatrics have always put the health and well-being of our patients and families at the heart of every decision we make. In the midst of this pandemic, there has now been a confirmed case of COVID in Onondaga County. Per the CDC, NYS governor, and NYS health dept., we need to temporarily alter the structure of how our office runs.
Starting immediately, we will have well child visits, healthy med checks, mild injuries seen in the morning only. We will have our sick visits seen in the afternoon. If you wish to cancel your well child visit or if your child is doing well on medications long term, we will refill medications for now and postpone rechecks. In addition to separating by appointment times, we will also try to physically decrease exposure as much as possible. As always, there will not be a fee for canceling appointments at this time.
If a child has a fever, cough, [and has not traveled, had exposure to a person who has been diagnosed with COVID or being treated for COVID], we will ask that you wait in your car and call the office when you have arrived. We will then call your phone back once the room is ready for you to come in. We will also take extraordinary measures to clean the rooms and medical supplies after each visit. Next, we will be temporarily removing toys and tables from the waiting rooms to reduce unnecessary exposure. We will also decrease the number of available chairs and spread them out more as well.
Please try to limit the number of people that come into the office, ideally one adult with the patient. While children have been well protected from this virus, we want to protect the elderly and at risk patients from unnecessary exposure. We want to limit and slow the spread of this disease for all our loved ones.
We apologize for the inconvenience to families that had taken the time to schedule their well child visits and consults in the afternoon. We understand how difficult this can be, but the safety of your children and family members is the utmost importance. These new policies will be subject to change as the disease burden and threat shifts, we will be continuously updating and following recommendations from the CDC and NYS Dept. of Health.
As always, we will be available outside of office hours on our on-call phone 315-806-6414.
We will also have the information about schools, social and mental health concerns, and the COVID hotline posted to our website and facebook.
Oswego COVID Hotline: 315-349-3330
Information on CO-VID 19: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus