With a continued trend of reduced COVID-19 volumes, Intermountain is relaxing some COVID-19 protocols and reopening schedules to support surgical procedures and patient access to care.
- Surgical caregivers who were deployed to assist in COVID-19 care have now returned to surgical settings.
- The number of caregivers out sick with COVID-19 is at a minimum.
- Hospital capacities again allow for inpatient postoperative care.
- Pre-procedural testing protocols have eased.
Updates to pre-procedural COVID-19 testing
Intermountain adjusted requirements for pre-procedural COVID-19 testing on March 7. Because of encouraging trends and recommendations from the CDC, Intermountain has implemented the following:
Patients may proceed without COVID-19 testing before surgery or other procedures if the following conditions are met:
- Patient is without COVID-19 symptoms in the last 14 days.
- Patient has no known exposure to COVID-19 in the last 10 days.
- Patient isn’t classified as immunocompromised or hemodialysis dependent.
See Pre-Procedure Screening SARS-CoV-2 Guidelines
Patients who test positive for COVID-19 and require urgent or emergent surgical care will continue to receive needed surgical care and treating caregivers must follow PPE guidelines:
- Urgent/emergent procedures should proceed with caregivers wearing PPE for airborne precautions.
- Caregivers should wear airborne PPE when aerosol-generating care is required of COVID/PUI patients until recovery of infectious state has been met as defined by:
- At least 24 hours since resolution of fever without the use of fever‐reducing medications and improvement in respiratory symptoms
- At least 10 days since first positive viral test if asymptomatic
- At least 10 days since symptoms first appeared for minimum to moderate illness
- At least 20 days since symptoms first appeared if illness required hospitalization
For patients who test positive for COVID-19 and require nonurgent, elective surgical care:
- Caregivers and patients should have a discussion about the appropriate timeline to schedule nonurgent surgical care when recovering from COVID-19. The delay may be up to four to 12 weeks based on the nature of the surgery, the patient’s health status, and the severity of the COVID infection.
See Decision Pathway for Pre-procedure Positive Test for information to facilitate the conversation on COVID-19 recovery and perioperative risk.