Ray Wahl, Chief Operating Officer
Health and Safety, Our Top Priority
At ATI, the health and safety of our team members and patients is always our top priority. As an essential business, we have remained open since the beginning of the pandemic and will continue to do so. While COVID-19 has changed the daily clinic operations, we have instituted additional safety measures to prevent the spread, providing the highest protection for both our patients and our team members.
Over the course of the pandemic, we have developed and refined our protocols and procedures based on the regular consultations with a respected, Chicago-based epidemiologist and following Center of Disease Control recommendations as well as state and local orders and guidelines.
How ATI Keeps our Patients Safe
We’re keeping patients safe by communicating protocols regularly with our clinics and ensuring they continue to follow the appropriate measures. We continue to screen everyone, every time with no exceptions. We’ve provided self-screening criteria to all team members prior to reporting to work each day. Upon arrival, managers will again screen staff members, following the same criteria, to identify potential close contact with those who may be exposed to or have contracted COVID-19.
If there is a possibility of exposure, we ask that team members remain home to self-quarantine for the required period of time prior to returning to work. We’ve mandated employee mask use and social distancing practices, as well as hand sanitation or hand washing before and after every treatment. We’ve provided safety glasses and face shields for our occupational therapists for additional protective measures.
How ATI Keeps our Team Members Safe
We’re keeping team members safe by mandating patient mask wearing and social distancing.
Through a regular cadence of communications, printed and digital signage, we’ve reminded our team members to adhere to all state and local regulations as well as hand and respiratory hygiene, cough etiquette, avoiding shaking hands, and washing or disinfecting their hands before and after consuming food. We ask team members to continually self-monitor for symptoms and immediately notify their managers if they suspect any changes in their health.
Clinic protocols include verbal screenings of all new patients prior to scheduling. If they answer yes to any of the screening questions, we reschedule them for a future date. If they experience symptoms within 72 hours of their appointment, we also reschedule them or ask them to take advantage of ATI’s telehealth option, CONNECT. To date, we have provided more than 51,000 online physical therapy sessions to help keep our patients on their road to recovery.
Keeping Clinics Clean to Reduce Risk
We have also doubled our efforts in keeping each clinic as clean as possible by sanitizing all treatment tables and exercise equipment after every use. This includes cleaning high-volume traffic areas such as the front desk counter, waiting room chairs, bathroom door handles, office and break areas, as well as cleaning shared objects such as laptops, keyboards, mobile phones/phone receivers, pens and markers. While one case of COVID is too many, the infection rate among our team members remains incredibly low during this time. This is due, in part, to our stringent screening and sanitization protocols as well as the commitment from our team members to keep everyone safe and healthy.
While this may become our new normal as the vaccine is rolled-out throughout the year, rest assured we will do everything we can to provide protection for the health and safety of our team members and patients.
A 15-year ATI veteran and trained physical therapist with a background in athletic training, Chief Operating Officer Ray Wahl is responsible for day-to-day operations and clinical functions across the company’s national footprint.