Transcription
Mary Ellen Clyne, PhD, President and CEO of Clara Maass Medical Center
I’m delighted to be able to share with you today that as part of our high reliability organization, we have done everything we can to ensure the safety of you, your family, our community, residents, physicians, and our employees.
Safety is one of our highest concerns, and I know that all of us have gone through a lot during this pandemic. The good news is, things are really turning around quite nicely, and we’re seeing a precipitous drop in the number of patients who have been affected by the Coronavirus. To that end, we wanted to share with you some of the approaches that we’ve taken to let you know that it’s absolutely fine not to put your health care on hold.
Please know that we are here as your resource. We understand the concerns that you may have as a result of the virus that has hit so many people. I want to let you know that from an employee perspective, we are checking and assessing our employees every day to make sure that their health is good, they don’t have a fever, and they feel well before they can come to work. We’re also doing antibody testing on our employees. That’s something that you've heard in the news about antibody testing. We’re doing it here for our staff. Additionally, we have ensured that the entire hospital has been cleaned. We want to make sure that you feel comfortable, that you know that we’re using all the appropriate products to ensure that it’s safe here for you
Whatever your health care needs are, know that Clara is ready to welcome you in with open arms, and to put that fear aside. We’ve known during this time that many of our have put your health care needs to the side. We don’t want you to have that fear any longer, and we want you to feel very comfortable coming in through our doors.
You’ll see that today I’m wearing a face mask, and for the near future I will continue to wear the face mask. I don’t want you to be nervous about that. Every single employee in the hospital will be wearing a face mask, including our physicians, so don’t let that deter you, it’s just the appropriate precautions that we want to take, again, to keep everybody safe.
When you come in to be with us, some of the things that will happen – to make you aware – is that we’re going to check your temperature as well. We’re going to ask how you’re feeling, and if you don’t feel well, we’re going to ask you to reconsider your visit here at the hospital. We’ll make sure your doctor knows, but we want to keep you safe, we want to keep the patients here safe, and our employees safe.
We are continuing to practice the social distancing. That has not let up, things that you may be doing right now at home with your families, and your communities, and we are encouraging everybody to stay at least six feet apart from one another, so that will continue.
We’ve made sure – in our various waiting rooms – if you’re coming in for some testing, that our seats are separated and notations that you can stay six feet apart from one another.
With that, I just want to reassure you that it’s absolutely safe to be able to come back to the hospital for your health care needs. I do want thank all of you in the community for the support that you’ve provided to our health care heroes, the staff, and the physicians here have done a phenomenal job. So proud and blessed to be able to work side-by-side with the great team of people that we have here, and we want to also thank all the donors that have kept us going through the pandemic.
I want to thank our employees, our medical staff, and again, each and every one of you. You have not let us down, and we are not going to let you down. We’re here for whatever it is you need, and to that end, I will close by saying welcome back.