Proliance Surgeons Offers Assistance to Hospitals & Surgeons During COVID-19 Outbreak

SEATTLE, WASH. – March 18, 2020 – Proliance Surgeons, Inc., one of the nation’s largest surgical practices, announced that it would postpone all elective surgeries in Proliance-controlled Ambulatory Surgery Centers (ASC) and temporarily suspend non-urgent patient care at each of its clinics and other facilities during the Coronavirus outbreak in the region. Urgent care will continue by Proliance surgeons in our locations and in partnership with area hospitals.

“We have made the necessary decision to postpone all elective procedures as well as patient appointments at each of our clinics within Proliance,” said Charles Peterson II, M.D., President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Proliance Surgeons. “It has become clear that the most critical key to successfully overcoming the COVID-19 epidemic involves drastically limiting the number of close contacts between people.”

Proliance Care Centers are limiting care to urgent and emergent encounters only until Friday, March 27, 2020. The organization made this decision on March 15, 2020 and instituted it widely on Tuesday, March 17, 2020 at each of its facilities. This includes all ambulatory service center procedures, clinic visits, MRI’s, PT, and other general patient care programs. Obstetrical care will continue to be provided uninterrupted.

“We will continue to monitor the situation with our healthcare community and government, and will update the community if and when this changes,” he added.

Proliance is also instituting telemedicine services to provide an additional layer of protection for patients, staff and providers.

Assisting Local Hospitals & Surgeons

Proliance Surgeons’ administrative leaders are in contact with Washington hospital systems to offer assistance in delivering acute care for patients with fractures, trauma, or urgent surgical care in seven different surgical specialties.

“As a specialty-care surgical organization, we can offer our surgical teams to provide urgent and appropriate emergent surgical care in our carefully-screened ASC’s as a critical backup to Puget Sound area hospitals. Offering those hospitals the unique option of providing surgical services at our ASC’s ensures our hospital colleagues can focus on COVID-19 patients. This maintains social distancing standards, preserves personal protective equipment and lowers the potential for COVID-19 exposures for patients, families and staff.”

Patients with urgent injuries or urgent care needs in specialties (orthopedics, sports medicine, ear nose & throat, general surgery, ophthalmology, pain management and urology) treated by Proliance Surgeons should first call their Proliance Surgeons’ office for further information. Then, if necessary, can visit the Proliance website at ProlianceSurgeons.com to identify available ASC and clinic locations that are remaining open during this time period.

In addition to providing urgent surgical services to ease the burden on local hospitals, Proliance is in contact with local surgeons to offer availability of its ASC operating rooms and staff to help them provide urgent surgical care for patients.

“All King County healthcare professionals are dedicated to providing the highest quality medical care to patients in acute and emergency situations,” said Dr. Peterson. “By partnering with each other, we are better able to serve to the healthcare needs of our community, flatten the curve of COVID-19 disease spread, and come through this crisis more safely and quickly.”

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