Covid-19

COVID-19 OFFICE UPDATE

Patients and friends,

The office has reopened to essentially normal business hours. We are acutely aware that conditions still need to be treated, procedures still need to be performed, and screenings still need to be scheduled to prevent disease. Your health is too important to put on hold. We have heightened safety measures in place as listed below:

• All patients must bring and wear a mask the entire time they are in the office. Cloth or other home-made masks are acceptable.
• No patients will stay in our waiting room. Arrive at your appointed time, enter the office and someone will bring you straight back to the exam room.
• New patients must do their intake paperwork ahead of time through the online portal or print at home.
• Dr. Kumra and staff will wear masks during all patient encounters.
• We are performing diligent hand washing and have stringent cleaning protocols for the patient rooms.
• We have central air filtration in each exam room.
• All patients will be screened prior to appointment for fever, cough, shortness of breath, cold/flu symptoms, red eyes, loss of smell/taste, and body aches. Prior to your appointment, we request that you visit the CDC Self-Checker below, to evaluate your risk for Covid (once on the CDC site, click the blue button on right side of page):

CDC SELF-CHECKER

While I can learn a lot from a video chat, nothing replaces the ability to actually look in the ears, nose, and throat to confirm the diagnosis. **ENT is a particularly difficult specialty for telemedicine since so much of it involves looking into small dark holes. There is really no way to look in someone's ears or nose over a video chat, and a blurry video of someone's mouth and throat is definitely not the same as in person!

Telemedicine appointments will continue to be available for higher risk patients and for routine follow up issues (like test results, etc). I hope all of you and your families are staying safe and healthy during these challenging times. Please call us with any questions at 212-580-1483.

Warm regards,

Dr. Kumra