AAP Voices

My partner and I started our small independent practice 30 years ago. We are seeing a second generation of children and lots of teens and young adults in college. 

Because of my partner’s age (he’s 77), he is doing telemedicine from home.  At 69 years, I’m the young one still in the office. 

When the pandemic first arrived, I met with our staff of four and spoke of the adjustments we were making to keep everyone safe: Using the patients’ cars as waiting rooms, bringing in one family at a time, and triaging by phone suspicious cases needing testing.

Our staff did not hesitate to continue to work despite some perceived risks. As it turned out, we were overwhelmed not with patients needing triage, but by a financial crisis. 

We initially saw an 80% to 90% reduction in visits. Now it’s down about 30% to 40%. We are calling the families of young children to keep them up to date on well childcare and immunizations.

Our staff has volunteered to cut back their hours to help us cut costs. They even took up cleaning duties when we had to drop our cleaning service. 

We can stay viable by not paying ourselves and because we own our office. We applied for and received a PPP loan, which will cover payroll for two months. But after that it’s a big question mark, like it is for everyone else. I know our story is not unique.

Send in your COVID-19 pandemic story, and we may share it here and on our social media channels. https://bit.ly/2XVvJIu