During this difficult time, we have to take every opportunity to thank our dedicated healthcare workforce for working through this pandemic in order to support the needs of the community. To get a better understanding of how COVID-19 impacted some of our local medical practices, I decided to sit with Dr. Gitendra Rajiyah, President of the Heart Center of the Oranges, better known by his loyal patients as “Dr. Raj.” Dr. Raj and the Heart Center have been serving the community for over 25 years.
Dhiren Shah: Welcome and thank you Dr. Raj for taking the time to sit with me. I would like to start by asking you how COVID-19 impacted your practice, and did you have to close down completely at any point of the pandemic?
Dr. Raj: Just like many others our practice was very much affected by COVID-19. The Heart Center of the Oranges is composed of 8 separate locations serving the areas of East orange, South Orange, West Orange, Maplewood and Bloomfield. Initially no one really knew how this virus was going to affect our lives from a long term perspective. Most of us thought that after a couple of weeks everything would return to normal. As we now know, this was not the case and I very quickly had to make some serious decisions. Abandoning the community was never an option and after meeting with my team we decided that we were going to consolidate and close some of the offices during the most critical months of the pandemic. Due to staffing shortages, a decision was made to maintain the West Orange, the Bloomfield and East Orange offices open and temporarily close the remainder of the HCO locations.
DS: How did your patient population access medical care and advice during this time?
Dr. Raj: Initially patients were very skeptical about accessing care in person which caused our volume to decrease significantly. We immediately transitioned to telemedicine providing the patients with remote access to their providers. This is something that we still provide to our patient population as needed. This applies to patients that are concerned about going out of their homes as well as patients that may be symptomatic.
DS: How did the pandemic impact your staff and how did you handle it?
Dr. Raj: Just like it did with the rest of the country, the pandemic greatly affected our staff from medical assistants to physicians creating a shortage in workforce. This was mainly caused by the struggles due to lack of adequate childcare because our organization only experienced a hand full of COVID cases within our staff out of almost 100 employees. One of the things that was very important to me during the early stages of the pandemic was to protect my staff and our patients. I immediately arranged for vast supplies of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) which is still being supplied to our staff on a weekly basis.
DS: It’s now almost 7 months since COVID-19 changed our lives, how is the Heart Center of the Oranges being impacted today?
Dr. Raj: I’m pleased to say that all of our offices are now open providing safe care at all locations. During the time we were closed, we made some changes to our waiting rooms and expanded the number of exam rooms at two of our locations so we could accommodate social distancing. We also make sure that in order to enter our facility patients must wear masks at all times and we encourage them to use hand sanitizer during the time they spend in the office.
DS: What are some of the things that patients should be doing to help with the spread of the virus, and what are your recommendations?
Dr. Raj: As we have all been made aware an individual can spread COVID-19 even without having any symptoms so my advice to everyone is to keep wearing masks, washing hands frequently and maintaining social distancing because you never know when you come into contact with someone carrying the virus. Our offices will remain open and available both in person and via televisit the later for symptomatic patients and for those who are concerned about going out.
DS: Thank you for your time Dr. Raj, and also thank you and your staff for making all your efforts to continue to stay open in order to provide the much needed support to our community.
