Dear CTS Members,

Most recently, California experienced its first case of COVID-19 attributed to community transmission, which was not related to travel or contact with travelers. This, of course, heightened an already tense situation among medical providers and patients about this disease. I want to assure you that CTS is committed to doing all we can to educate our members in preventing and preparing for local cases of COVID-19.

As respiratory health professionals, we are at the forefront of dealing with the crisis and as the COVID-19 situation continues to develop, I urge everyone to remain calm, compassionate, flexible, letting common sense and science guide our actions. This may be difficult given the growing media coverage and responsible actions that many businesses and academic institutions are taking. In particular, there has been a lack of organized guidance for our outpatient community which faces unique challenges given the lack of resources available to large hospitals and academic medical centers. With that in mind, CTS has created a CTS COVID-19 guideline/outpatient office policy that can be adopted at any institution (community and academic). The document provides insight into the prevention of COVID-19 in addition to testing and billing codes. To download this document click here:

https://calthoracic.org/cts-covid19-guidance/

I want to personally thank Asha Devereaux, Angela Wang, Francesca Torriani, Ryan Maves, Sachin Gupta, Janine Vintch, Anna Breiberg, Cedric Rutland and Abdullah Alismail for their time, effort and dedication in making this CTS COVID-19 document possible.

CTS is continuously monitoring this situation and encourage our members to keep up-to-date by checking back on the CTS Website (https://calthoracic.org/). In the meantime, please don’t hesitate to reach out with questions or concerns at https://calthoracic.org/contact/ or email us at info@calthoracic.org.

Laren Tan, MD
CTS President
LaTan@llu.edu