I think it’s important to remember that the primary concern of physicians during the COVID-19 pandemic has not been the economic impact on their practices. We’ve been primarily concerned with making sure our patients, our staff, our communities, our families, our hospitals and our health care system in general, survive this tragedy.

Having said that, the economic impact of COVID on my independent surgical practice here in Connecticut, was immediate and devastating. We went from seeing patients normally one afternoon to finding ourselves the next morning faced with a complete shutdown of the ability to perform any elective surgery whatsoever and the inability to see patients safely for anything other than a dire emergency.

This essentially meant that the office was closed for eight continuous weeks. It’s easy to imagine the economic impact that had on our ability to keep our employees on payroll and to continue all the overhead associated with the surgery practice. The PPP program did enable me to keep my nursing and secretarial staff on salary. It by no means ameliorated the financial hit the practice took, however.