Enhanced Safety Guidelines for COVID-19
The Yinova Center is committed to keeping our community and team as safe as possible during these unprecedented times, and have updated our health, safety, and cleaning policies detailed below. Before scheduling your in-clinic acupuncture treatment or massage, please make sure you are up to date on travel advisories.
HEIGHTENED STAFF & PATIENT SCREENING
Anyone coming into our centers, staff, and patients alike, will be required to sign a health declaration and have their temperature taken. If their temperature is 100 or more degrees, they will be asked to leave, and if a patient, reschedule. Yinova will allow patients to come into the clinic in accordance with the NY state guidelines for travel quarantines. Patients should check with the most recent guidelines set forth by the state before booking their appointment. We are also conducting consultations virtually, to minimize your time spent in the center. In addition, we ask that no guests accompany patients to their appointments unless previously approved by Yinova for medical reasons.
PERSONAL PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT (PPE)
All staff will be required to wear a surgical mask and scrubs in the center; all practitioners follow the current CDC recommendations for a healthcare facility. Patients are not required to wear a face mask, but are welcome to.
Contactless transactions
We request that you have a credit card on file with us before coming into the center; please contact us if you need to make alternative payment arrangements.
Enhanced cleaning
We have put into place enhanced cleaning procedures to ensure surfaces and key touchpoints are disinfected throughout the day and after each patient. We have had each location professionally cleaned using CDC-approved cleaners that are specialized and proven to remove COVID-related germs from surfaces. All cleaning products have been approved by the CDC and EPA as protective to Coronavirus (Sars-Cov-2). Between each appointment, rooms will be thoroughly disinfected, sheets will be changed, and all hard surfaces will be cleaned. Our practitioners and front desk staff wash and sanitize their hands before and after each patient interaction as well as each hour, and we have hand sanitizer available in the center.
These enhanced COVID procedures are on top of the already stringent guidelines we had in place for cleaning, acupuncture, and herb safety.
CLEANLINESS
We pride ourselves on creating a warm, peaceful environment here at the Center. Warm, peaceful, and clean. Cleanliness is a critical component of making this a place where you feel you can relax – but it is also absolutely crucial to making it safe. There’s a committed group of people working, often behind the scenes, to keep it this way. Daily, our work uniforms and linens are laundered in hypoallergenic soap and at high temperatures to make sure they are fresh and completely contaminant-free. Our medical waste (mainly acupuncture needles) is, of course, disposed of properly. Our practitioners wash and sanitize their hands before and after each treatment as well as each hour.
ACUPUNCTURE SAFETY
All our acupuncturists have passed an exam in Clean Needle Technique – just one of the ways we ensure we practice the highest standards. At Yinova we only use sterile, single-use acupuncture needles, which we dispose of safely after each treatment. We always swab with alcohol before inserting a needle. (It might also make you feel safer to know that inserting an acupuncture needle is not just a sterile procedure, but also a painless one.) Each treatment room is organized and clean, as you’d expect for any medical procedure. To read more about acupuncture click here.
During your treatment, your practitioner will do your intake while putting on gloves and preparing to needle. Your practitioner will swab all acupuncture points with alcohol before needling, place the needles, and dispose of the needle packaging, cotton balls, and gloves. After the allotted time, your practitioner will return to put on new gloves and remove the needles.
HERBAL SAFETY
All of our practitioners have completed at least four years of post-graduate training and passed stringent exams as licensed and board-certified herbalists. We prescribe formulations customized to each patient to maximize both effectiveness and safety. We pay particular attention to herb-drug interactions. We have earned the respect of many of our patients’ medical doctors because of our cautious approach and unblemished safety record – as well as our results. Part of that safety record – and success rate – comes from using only the best quality herbal products. Many brands of Chinese herbs have had issues with contamination, and it can be challenging for an untrained individual to tell the good from the substandard. At the Yinova Center, we use our expertise to research the best and most reliable sources for herbs thoroughly. Our standards are uncompromising, and we proudly stand behind the herbs we prescribe. To read more about the quality of our Chinese herbs, click here.
STAFF TRAINING
At the Yinova Center, all of our staff are trained to the highest standards. Our acupuncturists each have either an M.S. in Traditional Chinese Medicine or a Doctorate in Acupuncture and Chinese medicine and all licensed and board-certified in both acupuncture and herbology. We are an experienced team, and many of us have practiced together for over a decade. We take our continuing education seriously and enthusiastically study new advances in Chinese medicine as well as innovative ways to integrate Chinese medicine with conventional medical treatment.