In my previous post, I talked about some options I was considering for my next assignment. In reality, as the coronavirus continued to spread in the USA, I felt like I couldn’t make a decision until the very last minute. That meant my option working in the retail health clinic was out the window, because credentialing takes about a month.
I declined the offer to work at the community health center in San Diego, as I mentioned in my previous post, I was not interested in returning there. Ironically, they were begging me to accept the offer.
That left me with two last options, a primary care office in San Diego and a community health center in Chicago. The week prior to my current assignment ending, I started wondering if it was a bad idea to travel at all. I knew my current assignment would be open to me extending, since they didn’t have a new provider coming in to take my patients until summer.
Originally, I absolutely declined their offer to extend my assignment in Kentucky. Both the complexity of the patients and their “sour” attitudes had me looking forward to the end of my assignment.
Once the coronavirus reached Kentucky, we converted the majority of our appointments to phone visits. If I decided to extend, the job would be somewhat easier since there would be few face to face visits. I figured the easiest thing to do was extend my time in Kentucky.
When I followed up with the primary care office in San Diego, they no longer had a need because I was initially going to be covering a PCP military leave. Due to the covid 19, all military travel was cancelled. I also inquired about the position at the community health center in Chicago. They were still trying to figure out how they were going to proceed with visits so could not confirm if they wanted to move forward with the assignment.
Overnight, my traveling options were no longer existent. I thought about just going home (to Miami) like I had originally planned at the end of this assignment. Although it would have been nice to be close to family, I knew I would go stir crazy being stuck at home due to social distancing. It was also impossible to tell how long social isolation/state shut downs would last. Thus, I didn’t want to be out of work for more than a month.
I contemplated going back to my last assignment in Chicago, where I had a panel of patients I wanted to return to. But there was no point in going back there just to do phone visits. And again – this would require me to travel.
In conclusion, I decided to extend my assignment in Kentucky for another month. I was a bit worried that my job would decline the extension, thinking that anyone else could simply cover my patient panel by doing the phone calls. Yet, I think the phone visits would be challenging for a provider that didn’t know my patients already. My job agreed to an extension and the other PCPs were happy I was staying. I also had an extra month left on my apartment lease that the site would be responsible paying for whether I stayed or not.
I am not sure what will happen once my extension ends. I am taking it day by day just like the rest of the world. But I am grateful to be able to continue providing care to such a vulnerable population.
