To help prevent the spread of COVID-19, Northern Arizona Healthcare will be standing up a collection site at Verde Valley Medical Center beginning Thursday, March 26, to collect specimens that will be sent away to labs authorized to perform testing.
How it Works
Patients need a written order from a physician or provider for a sample to be collected. They can receive this by calling their primary care provider’s office. Only those with symptoms consistent with the screening criteria will have a sample collected. Only one person per vehicle will be swabbed.
Patients receive the order for a specimen to be collected and test from their physician or provider, meaning their physician has determined they meet the criteria to be tested based on symptoms and other factors, according to a VVMC spokeswoman. Patients’ physicians then sends Verde Valley Medical Canter the order electronically or gives the patient a paper written order, similar to when a primary care orders blood work for a patient.
Patients then bring that order to VVMC, and VVMC staff collect the sample at VVMC using a swab kit. That sample is then sent to a lab where it is tested. Only specific labs are able to actually do the testing. VMMC does not do the testing on site, just the sample collection. The lab then sends the test results to us to share with the patient.
The site will be open 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. and is subject to opening or closing based on the availability of supplies to collect the samples. Plans for setting up a collection site have been underway since last week, pending the availability of enough supplies to operate it. Recent shipments make it possible for the site to open. Continued operation depends upon supplies being available.
“The number of kits to collect samples from patients is limited, and we are making sure to keep a supply for the critically ill who may need hospitalization, before we collect samples from those with less serious symptoms,” said Ron Haase, Northern Arizona Healthcare Chief Administrative Officer for the Verde Valley. “Availability of supplies and best practice recommendations from the Centers of Disease Control are changing daily and our team is working together across Northern Arizona to move quickly in our charge to care for our communities.”
Patients will be notified by phone call as to their results, once received by Northern Arizona Healthcare from the testing facility. Northern Arizona Healthcare did not specific how long test results take, nor what testing lab would be conducting the tests,.
According to the testing facility LabCorp, the average turnaround time for COVID-19 is four or five days, but this could be longer or shorter, depending on the number of tests in the queue. Throat swab polymerase chain reaction testing, aka PCR, work by detecting about 100 specific genetic nucleotides within the virus, which contains about 30,000 nucleotides. Blood sample tests search for antibodies specific to the new disease known as COVID-19. Both take several hours to test once they arrive at a testing site. As labs can only test a limited number at a time, the most tests in the queue, the longer the wait.
If you have any questions, call the COVID-19 Public Hotline at 1-833-708-0894.
