Sent on behalf of Richard V. Homan, MD, President and Provost, Eastern Virginia Medical School and Kurt Stauder, DPH, MBA, CEO EVMS Medical Group.
On Friday, EVMS activated its continuity of operations plan and established evms.edu/COVID-19 as a resource for our faculty, residents, staff, and students. We encourage you to monitor this site for up-to-date information about COVID-19 and our response.
To safeguard the health of our campus and our community, we have established a drive-through COVID-19 clinical screening site for our patients, faculty, residents, staff and students. This screening site is not available to the general public and requires an appointment.
EVMS Medical Group patients who suspect they have COVID-19 or have been exposed to someone who has it should call their primary-care doctor to be screened for symptoms. If testing is required, a protocol has been established to set up a drive-though appointment for the patient. Clinical sites will provide directions to the drive-through site on campus for patients. Clinical staff wearing appropriate PPE will swab patients through the window of their vehicle, eliminating the need for patients to exit their car and minimizing exposure to others.
EVMS employees and members of their immediate family who suspect they have COVID-19 or have been exposed to someone who has it also are eligible to use the drive-through screening site with an appointment. Employees who have an EVMS primary-care physician can call their doctor for pre-screening and, if warranted, be scheduled an appointment for the drive-through site. Employees who do not use an EVMS primary care physician can complete a phone screening with EVMS Occupational Health and, if needed, be scheduled for a drive-through appointment.
While patients of the Pediatrics, Radiology, Urology, Neurology and Emergency Medicine departments are not eligible to use the drive-through screening site, residents in those departments are and should follow the appropriate screening procedures to determine whether an appointment is warranted.
Students who have traveled or who suspect they have COVID-19 or have been exposed to someone who has it should be pre-screened by phone and scheduled through the Student Health Center.
Clinical protocols have been established and are available on a special COVID-19 resource website using your EVMS network log-in credentials. Additionally, we are creating a patient information section on our public COVID-19 website.
Finally, we would like to thank Dr. Margaret Baumgarten, Dr. Edward Oldfield and Dr. Barry Rittman for their hard work in developing our protocols and helping us better prepare our response to this pandemic. We thank you for your commitment to providing quality care and keeping our community healthy. Your safety is important to us and we will continue to work diligently to protect your health — just as you work to improve the health of Hampton Roads.
Please monitor evms.edu/COVID-19 for future updates.