Employers signing up for COVID-19 testing
Why have employees wait in drive-thru lines when they could get COVID-19 testing through their companies, much as they get flu shots?
That’s the thinking of UT Physicians, which is offering coronavirus testing services to local businesses as the falling rate of COVID-19 cases again raises the prospect of bringing employees back to the office. Already, UT Physicians, a group of about 2,000 doctors owned by the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, has signed up eight companies for its testing program.
The physician’s group aims to capitalize on its access to the University of Texas Health Science Center’s laboratory, which can process up to 1,000 nasal or throat swabs a day and produce results within 48 hours. It would allow companies to bypass testing backlogs that previously plagued contractors such as LabCorp or Quest Diagnostics.
“The timeliness and action that (employers) are able to take with their employees is really the selling point,” said Kim Alleman, UT Physicians’ director of nursing and patient care services.
Lab contractors nationwide are introducing “return to work” testing initiatives as companies determine strategies for bringing employees back into the office. Ready access to testing and quick results is considered crucial by many companies
because it can help them prevent someone from unknowingly carrying the virus into the workplace, spreading it to colleagues and forcing the shutdown of production or services.
Finding customers
UT Physicians offer two options. Companies can send individuals to one of UT Physicians’ four test sites or, for larger companies that want to test groups of employees, clinicians can come to company offices to conduct the testing. Results are provided to both the testtaker and their employer.
Among the firms that have signed up for the testing services is Frazer, a southwest Houston company that builds ambulances and mobile health care clinics. CEO Laura Griffin said she became frustrated by how long it took for her employees to get COVID-19 results back, which by June were taking 10 to 14 days.
Often, employees had to negotiate long lines at test sites, particularly early on. In April, lines to get tested in Houston wrapped around parking lots and clogged streets.
Frazer in 2014 had designed UT Physicians’ mobile stroke unit, an ambulance specially designed for stroke patients. Griffin reached out to Alleman, who was thinking about creating a testing program for local businesses. Frazer signed on in June as one of UT Physicians’ first corporate COVID-19 testing customers.
Frazer pays $150 per test. If a Frazer employee reports COVID-19 symptoms or that they’ve been exposed to the virus, a manager can schedule a same-day or next-day test at UT Physicians.
Seven of Griffin’s roughly 160 workers have tested positive for COVID-19. The corporate test, she said, prevented internal spread within the company.
“We consider it a very small cost to keep our employees safe,” Griffin said.
On July 30, Bert Jones, a Frazer vice president left work feeling rundown. He woke up at 5:30 the next morning, a Friday, and sent a text about his symptoms to a group chat with colleagues, including Griffin and Christian McPherson, the company’s safety director.
Two hours later, McPherson called with instructions to get a COVID-19 test at UT Physicians. By 9 a.m., he was pulling up in an alleyway for a nasal swab at their Texas Medical Center location. At 10 p.m., he had the results: positive.
Jones has a mild case and returned to work July 17. For Griffin, the quick results provided “peace of mind” that the virus was identified before it could spread.
The speedy turnaround also impressed Alastair McClean, president of Houston-based Enventure Global Technology, which expands pipelines for both onshore and offshore well construction and repair. McClean worried if he didn’t catch one COVID-19 case, the virus could spread through his staff of nearly 125 employees — a worry that intensified after one of his workers spent hours in line at a drive-thru testing site.
“It’s the others exposed as well,” McClean said. “If they’ve been in close contact, we may end up with four or five staff that can’t go to work.”
Companies pay different prices depending on how many tests they order, with discounts for larger volumes. Enventure paid $250 per test, and allowed employees’ spouses to be tested at their own expense. Five people have been tested since the company signed up with UT Physicians in early July.
Many of the operators Enventure works with require COVID-19 testing before letting people onto installations. Being able to test quickly gives McClean a sense of which employees are available to work.
What’s allowed
By offering free testing to employees, employers can get a better sense of whether their workers have caught the novel coronavirus. But there may be complications around testing employees under the Americans with Disabilities Act, said Jill Chapman, a senior consultant at Insperity, a Houston human resources services company.
Companies can require workers to take medical exams such as a COVID-19 test swab if it affects their ability to work and because even one infected employee could pose a “direct threat” to the health of the workforce, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. But it’s not a replacement for social distancing guidelines and masks.
At this time during the pandemic, it’s legal for all employers to require a test. And it makes sense, especially in workplaces where there’s a lot of interaction with customers, such as a restaurant or store, or if employees work in close quarters, such as at a factory.
Tests to determine whether an employee has COVID-19 antibodies are not allowed, because they only determine whether a person has had the disease in the past, not if they pose an immediate threat to their co-workers, according to the EEOC.
Jones, the Frazer executive, said he is grateful that the quick test and speedy results kept him from getting too close with his girlfriend and her kids or going into the office and unknowingly spreading COVID-19 to others. Not long after the test, he broke out into a low-grade fever for eight straight days. He was confined to bed rest for about 10 days.
Three weeks later, when the symptoms subsided, Jones went back to work. Before the pandemic, he’d never worried about flu season or a stomach bug going around. But now, Jones said, it’s valuable to have ready access to COVID-19 testing, not just for himself but also for the 160 other employees at Frazer.
“As someone in leadership, I appreciate just knowing we’re going to get a result within the day,” Jones said. “It’s really a relief.”