A Letter From Emerson Hospital's CEO

Dear Community Friends,

I am writing to you today with some important updates about the COVID-19 public health emergency. Our staff continues to stay focused on providing exceptional care to patients while adhering to the latest protocols to reduce the spread of the virus — which is so critical to our entire community at this time.

• We understand there are a lot of questions about testing. Currently we are testing high-priority patients due to the limited availability of tests. Our health care system, like those across the country, is responding first to those who are most at risk — health care workers, older adults, and people who have serious chronic medical conditions. For healthy adults with mild symptoms, we recommend staying home and avoiding contact with others.
• Effective Thursday, March 19, Emerson will postpone elective surgeries. This decision was made with our medical staff leadership and in keeping with Governor Baker’s hospital directive. If you have an upcoming surgery scheduled, please contact your physician’s office to determine if it needs to be postponed. We will do everything we can to reschedule surgeries as soon as it is safe to do so.
• Effective today, no visitors are allowed at Emerson Hospital. Like hospitals around the country, we have updated our visitor policy for the safety of our patients and staff. Some exceptions will be made to allow one healthy visitor for pediatric and maternity patients, and patients facing end of life. We understand this may be difficult, but it is necessary to help stop the spread of COVID-19.
• Social distancing must be taken seriously! The symptoms of COVID-19 take several days to appear. This means that someone can carry the virus even though they have no symptoms. Playdates and having people over to your home create new possibilities for transmissions of the virus that school/work/event closures are trying hard to prevent. We understand this is hard, especially for children and teenagers, but if we all do our part we can slow down the pace of this virus. More information is available at www.emersonhospital.org/coronavirus.
• Know that we are here for our community. Our incident command team continues to work around the clock, adjusting plans and policies to protect our staff and patients and care for the community. We continue to work very closely with local, state and national partners to ensure that we are best positioned to care for all patients.
• Take care of yourself! We know this is a challenging time for everyone, however, it is important that you take good care of yourself. Please know we are all in this together. Our behavioral health director, Tony Piro, MSW, shared information about how to manage COVID-19 stress in a recent podcast: www.emersonhospital.org/podcast. Additionally, here is a useful article from the Centers for Disease Control on managing anxiety and stress. I hope you find it helpful.

Thank you for your continued support of Emerson Hospital during these dynamic times. Our staff continues to impress me every day with their ability to adapt and respond to this ever-changing situation. You can rest assured that we are doing everything we can to help stop the spread of this virus.

Be well,
Chris
 
Christine Schuster, RN, MBA
President and CEO, Emerson Hospital