To all of our Quadax Clients,
You are an important member of our Quadax Client Community. As such, I wanted to reach out to you personally to share the steps we are taking in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak that we’ve all been monitoring. As we watch the news regarding COVID-19, we acknowledge that there is good reason to prepare for the likely eventuality that it will spread in the US, ultimately impacting our Clients and our staff directly.
At Quadax, we continually attempt to identify and mitigate operational risks. Through the years we’ve developed contingency plans, technical redundancies and failover protocols in recognition of our clients’ critical dependency on the services that we provide. We understand how essential it is that your business continues uninterrupted.
At the time this message was being composed, we already had three cases reported in Cuyahoga County in Ohio where our headquarters and many of our staff reside. Many of you have yet to see your first case. However it’s unreasonable for us to presume this aggressive disease will not impact all of us directly in the coming weeks and months. Therefore, we have prepared and are in the process of implementing, an Epidemic Plan which will enable us to maintain our services and operational readiness as this unfortunate epidemic advances in our Country. We intend to immediately activate this plan until such time as COVID-19 has arrested or has abated to the point that the risk is minimal.
- Our business is built on providing person-to-person contact and support-on-site service visits are a cornerstone of our service model. This approach does carry risks as our staffs are exposed to the high density environments of airports, airplanes, hotels, etc. Further, healthcare facilities we visit are potential hot spots for the transmission of pathogens. Therefore, in recognition of this increased risk, we are encouraging our staff and clients to utilize virtual meetings (e.g. Go To Meeting™) until such time as there is better control over the transmission of this virus. We recognize and acknowledge that remote meetings are an imperfect alternative to face-to-face contact. We look forward to resuming our standard mode of in-person meetings. However, we are confident that together we can use existing technology to make the most of our mutual meetings while reducing the risk of incidental exposure to our respective staffs, organizations and communities.
We are not closing the door at this time to travel that’s deemed essential by both parties. However we’re asking you to be judicious in your determination of the necessity of on-site requirements on our part or yours, in consideration of the increased risk of transmission that this travel will undoubtedly create. We will also suggest in these cases that we minimize the number of essential staff traveling to your facility (and you to our facilities) to again minimize this risk.
Your Client Experience Representatives will be in contact with you shortly to discuss and evaluate meetings that are already scheduled and due to be scheduled in the upcoming weeks and months. It’s our hope that we can agree on a meeting paradigm that will limit the risk to all of our staffs.
I’ve listed below several other precautions that we are in the process of executing in accordance with our Epidemic Plan:
- We are encouraging all staff to follow the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) with respect to avoiding close contact with people who are sick; washing hands frequently with soap and water for at least 20 seconds; cleaning and disinfecting frequently-touched objects and surfaces; avoiding touching eyes, nose, and mouth; and staying at home to self-quarantine when exhibiting any signs or symptoms of illness.
- Quadax will be extending additional telecommuting opportunities for our staff in keeping with guidance from global health authorities to implement social distancing. For some employees, working remotely will be a new experience and may entail a learning curve. We will be diligent to manage each such situation carefully so that our clients’ experience will not be negatively impacted.
- Quadax will be requesting that all employees that do require an on-site work day to sequester at their respective campus location and to maintain CDC recommended distances from other employees at that location, even if they appear healthy, to lessen the likelihood of spreading from an employee to others. We also plan to utilize our five office locations to the advantage of our clients during the epidemic to take advantage of distance as we place our in-office employees in the safest location possible.
- We are monitoring all relevant news, alerts, and reliable sources of information in order to step through our corporate plan quickly, effectively, and with minimal disruption to our clients. We will follow up with notices as needed throughout and at the conclusion of this threat.
- Connectivity to Quadax systems is not expected to be impacted. As referenced above, Quadax has invested significantly in business continuity planning and testing.
There are more planned messages being drafted for distribution to you in the near future that will provide more specificity related to the specific services that you receive from us. Please feel free to contact us directly with any questions or concerns.
We look forward to your acceptance of this interim plan as these unfortunate events continue to unfold. We all pray for a quick end to this epidemic and for those that have already been infected with the virus, and hope that you’ll join us in this prayer.
