7.1.2023
Dear patients,
As of Spring 2023, masks and increased social distancing are no longer required although we certainly respect anyone's wish to wear a mask or distance themselves.
Covid-19 testing is no longer required for any office visit or before any procedure, however we ask that any patient experiences fever, cough or other symptoms of an airborne contagious illness stay home and reschedule their appointment for a later date.
In April of 2020 as New York City's Covid-19 outbreak was peaking, we closed our offices to in-person consultations to protect our patients and staff. To ensure that our patients were still cared for, we developed a telemedicine program for virtual consultations using video- or telephone-based visits to evaluate and treat both new and existing patients. Our dedicated staff continued to work to answer phones, field questions, arrange tests and make referrals to the best of our ability during the crisis.
From March through May 2020, we completed over 2,200 telemedicine consultations from the safety of our and our patients' homes. We are grateful that we could continue to care for our patients remotely and found these virtual visits quite effective for a variety of symptoms and illnesses.
At the end of May 2020, our Advanced Endoscopy Center (AEC; https://www.aec-gi.com/) opened for those urgent procedures which had been delayed due to the pandemic. For the next six weeks the AEC slowly and carefully increased its availability while instituting new protections against Covid-19 for both staff and patients. The AEC exceeds all infection control measures as mandated by NYC and N.Y. State, including pre-op Covid-19 testing for all patients undergoing procedures. In June 2020, the State allowed us to resume elective endoscopic procedures and we continue to offer all necessary procedures to our patients in a clean, safe, protected and professional environment which is located outside of a busy hospital setting.
In June 2020, we reopened our offices to those patients needing in-person consultations and have continued to offer telemedicine appointments, where appropriate, to reduce unnecessary travel, exposure and congestion. Our high-touch areas are carefully and regularly cleaned; temperature and exposure screenings are performed for all visitors to the office; and unless absolutely needed, friends, family or other patient escorts are not allowed in the waiting rooms.
We wish to thank our staff and patients for trusting us to stay with our practice during and after the crisis.
Please use our website (https://www.gastroriverdale.
Sincerely,
Drs. Kramer, Tepler, Gotian, Harnik
and the staff of Gastroenterology and Liver Associates of Riverdale