Greater El Monte Community Hospital wishes to enter into a partnership/collaboration
with our local communities to help educate and mitigate the spread of
the COVID-19 virus within our communities.
Your health is our priority. We have the necessary precautions in place
to protect our patients, physicians, employees, and visitors. We have
a highly skilled team of Emergency Department Physicians, who have all
been trained regarding prompt screening for this disease, including the
formation of a COVID-19 Task Force.
Greater El Monte Community Hospital has incorporated CDC and WHO-recommended
guidelines, along with Infection Prevention best practices to ensure successful
mitigation efforts of this virus. Such measures include the following:
- Testing: We understand there are a lot of questions about testing. Currently
we are only testing high-risk patients who undergo a screening process
in our Emergency Department due to the limited availability of tests.
Our healthcare system like those across the country is responding first
to those who are most at risk – people who have serious chronic
medical conditions. For healthy adults with mild symptoms we recommend
staying home and avoid contact with others. However, we will provide access
to testing once the tests become more readily available.
- Effective Tuesday, March 18, we have updated our visitor policy for the
safety of our patients and staff. We will be allowing only one visitor
per patient at any given time. No one under the age of 18 will be allowed
to visit, unless the patient is deteriorating to an end-of-life situation.
Anyone entering the hospital and/or Emergency Department will have their
temperature monitored and will be asked a few screening questions including
recent travels, etc. Those with a temperature of 100 F will not gain entry
into the facility as a visitor or employee. These measures are very important
in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19 among our vulnerable patient
population.
- We highly encourage community members to follow CDC recommendation for
the prevention of spreading COVID-19. This includes:
- Social distancing must be taken seriously! The symptoms of COVID-19 may
take several days to appear. This means that someone can carry the virus
even though they have no symptoms. Play-dates and having people over to
your home, creates 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 spread of this virus.
- Hand hygiene and disinfection of surfaces is also critical in your day-to-day
life. Always perform hand hygiene by using soap& water for no less
than 40 seconds, and/or using an alcohol-based hand sanitizer prior to
touching your nose, mouth, or eyes.
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. For example, Greater El Monte Community Hospital has
implemented our Emergency Contingency Plan, which consists of erecting
a tent outside of the Emergency Department to assist in additional screening
of patient’s should we encounter an influx of patients. We continue
to work very closely with local, state and national partners, to ensure
that we are best positioned to care for all patients.
We know this is a challenging time for everyone however, it is important
that you take good care of yourself. Please know that we are all in this
together. Thank you for your continued support of Greater El Monte Community
Hospital during these trying times. You can rest be assured that we are
doing everything we can to help stop the spread of this virus.
Greater El Monte Community Hospital is standing by to provide excellent
compassionate care to our community. Thank you for allowing us to be your
partner in health.