We’ve been very successful with how we’ve been able to handle and stay open and be functional with COVID-19.” I’m very proud of the fact that we’ve been able to navigate it that way. But when you look at it from a clinic-by-clinic viewpoint, that’s not necessarily what’s the best case for that scenario.
“At times, that’s been hard for me to navigate because you’ve got people that believe it can only be one way based upon their community experience. While that individualized approach created challenges from an organizational standpoint, Golla said he wouldn’t have it any other way. “We’ve been able to do it location by location, figure out what works for a clinic in its community, that makes the most sense, based upon not only the anecdotal data we have at the location but also the traditional reaction of the community.” “What I would say in terms of infectious disease control and veterinary medicine, it’s been very, very rewarding to me in that it hasn’t been a one-size-fits-all approach that we try to do with a lot of these things,” said Golla. While some hospitals went directly to curbside service and a couple locked their doors, many hospitals found a way to navigate people coming in using a regimented manner with their masks on, separated from everybody and doing a one-at-a-time, concierge-type service. ‘Yeah, I get the next day off, but I’m sleeping from the day I worked with the 12-hour shift until my next shift.’ With the volume we had, it didn’t work.” After two weeks, the staff were saying they couldn’t keep pace. “The problem with that was you had half the staff trying to do all of the work,” he said. For instance, Golla said staff experimented with 50/50 shifts where the staff was split in two. Like most veterinary hospitals, Innove˘tive veterinarians and staff experimented with different safety measures. But when human lives are at stake, you’re going to err on the side of caution, and you’re going to do things that you think can work.” “There was a lot of fear driving decisions, and some of those fears may have driven things a bit to the extreme. “In the beginning, it was the unknown – we didn’t know what we didn’t know,” he said. While that generosity did create a temporary shortfall of available PPE in July 2020 when cases of COVID-19 began to rise in Central Texas, Golla said Innove˘tive hospitals worked through those disruptions. Some of the more creative solutions involved staff members sewing together surgical masks and creating gowns to use out of bedsheets, “because we knew we could function in that capacity so that our human brethren could have what we had in the clinics to be able to function and protect themselves,” he said.
“And then we had to get creative on how we continued our processes.” “We very quickly went from a very regimented, systematic program to handing over our sterile gloves, masks, and extra gowns,” said Golla. But, they didn’t hesitate to relinquish PPE to local hospitals to help alleviate the critical shortage on the human side of medicine when the need arose. In late March and early April 2020, Innove˘tive Petcare veterinary hospitals had more than enough personal protective equipment. Veterinary Advantage reached out to veterinarians and industry stakeholders to gauge what their response was to the initial challenges of infectious disease prevention amid the pandemic and how those responses may have developed into long-term approaches and solutions. And I think our COVID-19 response has been the same.” “It is very regimented to the local communities. “I think that’s what’s really unique about veterinary medicine – there isn’t this across-the-board way we treat pets,” Golla said. If an animal were brought in with a leash, the veterinary hospital staff would take another leash to put on the dog so that they didn’t have to touch the owner’s leash. Clients and staff wore masks, and there was a lot of handwashing going on. People still came to the door, but only when it was their turn. The doors to the veterinary hospital were never locked. There the restaurants didn’t close down, and the grocery stores remained open. Their mask policies and containment policies were stricter than most, “and the clinics that I managed there locked their doors.”īut 45 miles to the south in a small Texas town of about 6,000, the response was different. Across the board, the Texas capital shut down harder than anybody else in the state, he said. For instance, Austin, Texas, was an intensely managed community when it came to COVID-19 protocols, said Steven Golla, DVM, MS, regional operations manager, Central Texas, for Innove˘tive Petcare. It’s amazing the difference 45 miles makes. Veterinary hospitals have proven to be creative and resilient when it comes to their infectious disease prevention efforts.
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