At Eden Health, we’ve been partnering with employers to protect their onsite employees during this difficult time. The spread of the novel coronavirus and its associated disease, COVID-19, in over 170 countries and high rate of cases throughout the United States require businesses to implement new, proactive policies and protocols to protect their employees and continue to operate successfully despite uncertainty. As a result, we’ve implemented a set of protocols to improve the overall health and safety of workplaces.
While work-from-home policies are a valuable tool to reduce the risk of spread, many businesses require certain employees to be on-site for key business functions. The following protocols provide a comprehensive, evidence-based approach to monitoring, triaging, and treating essential employees to ensure safe and successful continuation of operations.
The goals of the protocols:
- Protect employees’ physical health and emotional well-being
- Prevent avoidable spread of COVID-19
- Preserve employees’ ability to perform business-critical functions
- Ensure the business is able to continue to operate
COVID-19 best practices / protocols
Eden Health recommends a four-pronged approach to manage risk associated with essential staffing. The approach is holistic and utilizes a single clinical team that understands the context of the individual employee and the employer. The model below includes daily protocols that are repeatable, scalable, and easy to follow:
- Active monitoring: Each morning, the Eden clinical team assesses employees via the Eden Health mobile app and verifies an at-home temperature reading before employees leave their homes.
- Virtual triage and treatment
- Physical symptoms: Employees with concerning physical symptoms are connected virtually to primary care providers to provide real-time health assessments and triage prior to arrival at their workplace. Assessments are provided via the Eden Health mobile app, which serves as a single point of continuous contact with the Eden clinical team.
- Mental health concerns: Individuals are monitored for anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues, and are connected to licensed therapists for video visits as appropriate.
- Diagnostic testing and care: Employees with exposure risk and symptoms that require diagnostic testing receive concierge navigation to local testing facilities with access to the test including Eden clinicians calling ahead to the facility and providing information on the patient and symptoms. Individuals with symptoms and those who have tested positive for COVID-19 receive ongoing coordinated care and treatment from the Eden clinical team. If testing is not indicated and at home monitoring is the clinically recommended pathway then we will support them throughout their at-home stay.
- Dedicated Medical Director: Eden Health matches the employer with a Medical Director who provides guidance and support to the employer’s leadership as well as direct patient support for severe illness. In the case of severe illness, the Medical Director and Eden Health clinical team facilitates transfer to a hospital that can care for the impacted employee. Eden will provide ongoing support for the employee and assist the employer in decision making.
With these 4 practices in place, employers who require on-site employees for business continuity can enhance the the well being of–and reduce the risks facing–their essential workforce during these difficult times.
