CANFIELD, Ohio — Healthcare providers in smaller communities throughout Ohio are finding ways to make COVID-19 testing available to patients.
- A family practice in Canfield partnered with QUICKmed Urgent Care to provide drive-thru testing at the Canfield Fairgrounds
- QUICKmed Urgent Care says it's provided drive-thru testing in Trumbull, Mahoning and Columbiana Counties
- QUICKmed Urgent Care has tested over 8,000 people since late March
What You Need To Know
Like many healthcare providers across the world, life and work for Dr. Gregory Zinni and nurse practitioner Elizabeth Zinni has changed.
“I’ve been in practice for over 30 years and never have I seen an issue like this that has really affected our day-to-day lives,” said Dr. Zinni.
The father and daughter say they're now dealing with similar problems many small providers faced when the COVID-19 outbreak started.
"We were, I guess, in the dark as medical providers and very frustrated initially because the testing was not available, we did not have appropriate equipment to care for our patients, so it was frustrating from a provider standpoint that we weren’t able to give the patients what they needed," said Elizabeth Zinni MSN, FNP.
But Zinni says they’ve been coming up with ways to increase access to testing for people in the area who need it. The Zinnis partnered with QUICKmed Urgent Care in Youngstown to provide drive- thru testing at the Canfield Fairgrounds, making it possible to test around 200 people in one day.
"We happened to have a high complexity lab at our Youngstown location. So, we, you know, we advocated, and we knocked on every door that let us in until we were able to advocate for and bring testing in here," said Lena Esmail, CEO of Quickmed Urgent Care. "And we were able to do that very early on."
Esmail says QUICKmed Urgent Care has been able to test over 8,000 people since late March. This includes drive-thru testing in Trumbull, Mahoning and Columbiana counties. Preregistration is used to keep the operation running smoothly.
"If they were concerned, they might have coronavirus, then a provider from the office would call them via Telehealth, FaceTime, Facebook Messenger, whatever method they had for telecommunication that way and have a visit with them to evaluate to make sure that they did indeed meet some sort of criteria to be tested," said Esmail.
And the Zinnis and some providers are still facing new challenges from a new health threat.
"I think a lot of local non-hospital-owned primary care offices are feeling limited in what they can do. They’re feeling like they don’t have the appropriate measures to test their patients. Of course, we have been told that any patient with respiratory symptoms we cannot admit to the hospital directly, they have to go through the emergency room. So, I know that’s frustrating for a lot of medical providers. There’s just been a lot of precautions put into place, restrictions put into place. So it’s made it difficult to practice medicine, but also learning more about this virus."
QUICKmed Urgent Care says it’s started doing antibody testing, which is something the Zinni's practice is looking into.