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Seattle Children’s Urology has updated its referral guidelines and created new resources for primary care providers to help them manage urologic conditions in primary care and know when to refer to a specialist. For details, visit Urology’s “Refer a Patient” page which includes these new resources:
Seattle Children’s has hosted several panel presentations on COVID-19 that are now available to view on our YouTube channel:
Seattle Children’s is officially calling a close to the influenza season due to the significant drop-off in (non-COVID-19) respiratory viruses detected during the last two weeks of testing.
To help contain the spread of COVID-19 in our community, Seattle Children’s has canceled large group gatherings taking place at our facilities, including those with attendees from the community (e.g. CMEs, classes, conferences, PALS courses, etc.). Please check with event organizers if you have questions or need additional information. If you are registered for an event and it is moved to WebeEx only, event organizers will notify you.
Seattle Children’s new Building Care officially “topped out” in late March as construction workers placed the building’s top beam in position. The 310,000 square foot facility, scheduled to open in spring 2022, will serve as the new “front door” to Seattle Children’s.
For a summary of Seattle Children’s news and information about COVID-19, read our Provider FAQs.
All patients and visitors are being screened for COVID-19 at our facility entrances. As we learn more about the coronavirus and the symptoms it can cause, we’ll continue to assess our entrance screening process and make adjustments as necessary to help keep our workforce members and patients safe. Based on recent findings about the virus, we have added additional symptoms to our entrance screening process.
View our screening algorithms for:
Visitors to the Lab who screen positive will be escorted to a negative pressure room and have their labs drawn in the negative pressure room, rather than diverted to the ED.
To align with the practices of many of our partners in the Children’s Hospital Association, Seattle Children’s is now allowing only one visitor at a time per patient. This applies to both inpatients and clinic patients including those visiting the ED and urgent care. This step will be challenging for our patients and families, but it is essential to limiting potential exposure to the virus that causes COVID-19. For inpatients, up to four parents or caregivers can be designated, but only one can visit at a time.
In order to keep our workforce safe and to preserve personal protective equipment (PPE), this week we started screening all pre-operative patients for COVID-19. This includes patients who will have a procedure in an operating room and those who need anesthesia in Radiology. These tests need to be collected 48 to 72 hours prior to surgery.
Outpatients who are scheduled for a procedure will be tested at our Sand Point Learning Center drive-through testing site. All testing is ordered by Seattle Children’s providers and is not open to the general public. The testing site remains open for Seattle Children’s workforce members also; hours of operation are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., seven days a week.
Providers at the Pre-Anesthesia Surgical Services (PASS) Clinic, in partnership with Perioperative Services, will be reviewing the operative schedule, informing families of the testing requirement, placing the screening order and communicating the test results. For patients already in the hospital or the Emergency Department, the PASS Clinic will work directly with the care teams to coordinate timely testing. Read full post »
Join us Thursday, March 26 for “COVID-19: The Seattle Children’s Experience” via Webex at 8 a.m. PST. More information is available here.
The following triage guidelines are being used by clinics to ensure a consistent approach to scheduling ambulatory patients during COVID-19. These will be used for patients who are currently scheduled, as well as new scheduling requests. The guidelines are intended to continue to provide needed care to patients, preserve PPE, and promote social distancing for our staff, providers, and community.
Due to the uncertain duration of this pandemic situation, these guidelines will be used for current and new appointment requests until May 1. This will avoid the need to reschedule patients, decrease a scheduling backlog and access constraints, and allow for appropriate prioritization once standard operations resume.
We will provide an update in early- to mid-April letting you know whether or not this will continue through June 1. Thank you for your patience and efforts to continue providing patient care in alternative ways when possible.
Tier 1: Patients who need to be seen in person by the provider within the next 6 weeks (until May 1).
Tier 2: Patients who can be seen with a telephone or telehealth visit — can be scheduled at any time.
Tier 3: Patients who can be rescheduled or placed in the queue for scheduling when we resume normal business operations — can be placed in a queue to schedule an in-person visit at a later date.
Seattle Children’s has added the following information to our Provider FAQs – COVID-19.
Seattle Children’s has updated its guidelines for testing pediatric patients for the coronavirus, in accordance with guidance from Public Health – Seattle & King County and uncertainty in the testing supply chain. We will continue to update our guidelines as the situation changes.
Seattle Children’s is now testing the following for COVID-19:
Seattle Children’s has added the following information to our Provider FAQs – COVID-19.
Based on new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations for Seattle-King, Pierce and Snohomish County, Seattle Children’s will cancel all elective surgeries and procedures until further notice. The temporary cancellation of elective surgeries has gone into effect and we have been calling patient families to notify them. PCPs will be notified through our standard channels. We will continue to perform urgent surgeries and procedures during this time. We understand canceling surgeries will have a major impact on the lives of patients and families and appreciate your support while our community is going through this public health emergency.
A: In response to the updated CDC recommendations, we are reaching out to families to offer telephone (i.e. non-video) or telehealth appointments, or cancel non-urgent ambulatory appointments that can be safely postponed. We will limit all new schedules to urgent and medically necessary clinic visits.
A: On March 13, Seattle Children’s began offering testing for workforce members who have symptoms of COVID-19 (fever, cough, difficulty breathing). At this time testing is available to Seattle Children’s workforce who have a badge. Read full post »
Seattle Children's complies with applicable federal and other civil rights laws and does not discriminate, exclude people or treat them differently based on race, color, religion (creed), sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin (ancestry), age, disability, or any other status protected by applicable federal, state or local law. Financial assistance for medically necessary services is based on family income and hospital resources and is provided to children under age 21 whose primary residence is in Washington, Alaska, Montana or Idaho.
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