A letter from our President & CEO, Harry Weis

Dear Community Members:

We want to provide an important update about how the COVID-19 situation is being handled at Tahoe Forest Health System, and how our caring team is focused on protecting and treating potential or real COVID-19 patients, or other ill or injured patients.  

There is one positive COVID-19 patient so far in our local area, and that case has been handled well. We ask the public to carefully read and follow the public health safety guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and the Nevada County Health Department. Contact information for both resources is available on www.tfhd.com. This is the best advice for all of us.  

If our community stays current with the changing guidance from the State of California, we should be able to hold the number of positive COVID-19 cases in our region to a very low number.  

In the meantime, our team is being very proactive in developing new patient care and contact processes to keep our community and our healthcare team as safe as possible.  

We are actively working to reduce, restrict or defer elective physician office visits, elective lab tests, x-rays and other imaging, and surgeries. We are doing this with your health and safety in mind, so our team can focus on ill patients. We’d like to keep our residents who are generally well away from the hospital campus for the next 30 days or so.

Please expect to see signage at the front of each of our physician offices with important instructions if you are feeling ill. We have limited the number entrances at our hospitals to our main door and the emergency department entrance.  

For all other questions related to COVID-19, please contact your county health department:

• Nevada County Public Health: (833) 342-5211
• Placer County Public Health: (530) 886-5310
• Washoe County Public Health: (775) 328-2427
• El Dorado County Public Health: Dial 211 on your phone
   

Based on answers to the COVID-19 screening questions, our nurses will redirect all patients to the right patient care location within our healthcare system. We are very focused on keeping all applicable patients out of our physician offices, emergency department and the hospital to lower infection control risks. Of course, our emergency department is open 24/7 for life threatening emergencies. 

We have also created a drive-through clinic on our Tahoe Forest Hospital campus that is referral-only, and patients may be directed to it for testing if it’s needed. Our nurses will describe that location to patients should it be the best fit for a patient’s condition.  

We care very deeply about each one of you. The situation around COVID-19 is evolving everyday, and we want to keep you informed. 

Harry Weis
President and CEO
Tahoe Forest Health System