The Chief Medical Officer of OSF Sacred Heart Medical Center in Danville is working to get elective surgeries and other procedures back on track after they were paused earlier because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Vincent Kucich says citizens who had procedures delayed can now get them rescheduled…
{”Reach out to your primary care physician, to your specialist. Follow-up as you had done before. Follow-up with your clinic care,” said Dr. Kucich. ”Again, it may be virtual. You may be coming visiting your cardiologist and you may have a virtual visit – same with your primary care doctor. If you need that shoulder looked at, and that knee taken care of, call your orthopedic surgeon and get ready and get scheduled. The surgery is safe – the hospital is safe.”}
Dr. Kucich was a guest on WDAN Radio’s Newsmakers program Thursday morning. He noted that while progress is being made regarding the pandemic, citizens still need to be cautious….
{”The virus hasn’t been killed and we need to see what it’s going to have. It’s a little different than the other two viruses that we had before – SARS 1 and MERS. So we’re still learning, and again that caution is very important,” said Dr. Kucich.}
Dr. Kucich remembers how he felt when he learned the COVID-19 pandemic was going to be felt locally….
{”This was a new time for us. In my forty-five years of practice as a physician and surgeon I’ve never experienced something like this. And I think I can say that for 99-percent of all the healthcare workers. This was different. So we had to think, innovate, work with partners to get the best service that we can at the time,” added Dr. Kucich. ”I’ve used the word – others have used the word – it was very fluid. Things may have changed from day to day as we continued to glean and make it better so that we could provide the appropriate, safe service, and then move on.”}
You can hear the entire program with Dr. Kucich by going to the homepage of VermilionCountyFirst.com and clicking on the ‘On Demand’ button – then on Newsmakers.
