Hi there. This is Cindy Lu of CHRO partners and I'm joined today by John Alexis, Alexis and dr Nick Karr. That's car with a K I with safe work health. And today they're going to tell us a little bit about testing to test or not to test. Um, what are the things that you should be looking for, um, when you're looking for a service provider and,

um, John, I'd love to, and dr Nick, love to start with. How did this whole thing come about for you there? You know, last year there was no such thing as COVID 19 testing centers or services. So, uh, initially we had, um, been doing testing at the, at the urgent cares we had. I mean,

it back up a little bit. Um, as we started to see Cove ID become, uh, more of an issue and we were becoming more aware of it and we saw the spread of it. Um, we had seen a pretty dramatic decrease in the volumes of the urgent cares and patients started calling us and saying, Hey, you know, I'm concerned.

Can you guys do testing? I hear about testing is available. I think I could have COBIT or I came in contact with someone that has it. And so we, uh, pretty quickly pivoted in Raphael to, um, make ourselves available as a testing resource. We started with a first urgent care location that we had down in cider Plaza and then expanded to our other locations throughout DFW.

And, uh, soon thereafter we started noticing that we would get employees that would come in and say, you know, my, I got to get a test before I can get back to work. My thermal let me come back in with, unless I've got a negative test. And then we get an employer saying, Hey, I've got, you know,

20 employees and I want to get them back in. And I, and I think that, you know, before they come back and I want to make sure that they're, they've been tested. Cause I want to know that I can keep my workplace safe. And in the midst of all of this, we started hearing about these different plant closures because of these outbreaks that were occurring due to the coronavirus.

And I had a, you know, I'd spoken with my business partner at the time and said, you know, I think that there's something to start thinking about how we're going to be able to help these employers as they were, you know, we're starting to enter this quarantine and the lockdown coming out of it. It was a recognition that eh, and testing from employers is going to be critical.

And so, uh, there was a conversation, um, with, with John as far as, you know, how could, you know, what is he seeing from an employer standpoint, you know, his background in the restaurant industry and how, is there some way that we could kind of combine our knowledge of these different industries, uh, as well as some understanding he had a certain processes as far as how to conduct these tests and in terms of big testing events.

And that's where the, the idea for safe work was born. And, um, I don't know, John, if you want to, yeah. We, we quickly realized that coven 19 testing, um, could almost be considered like a wellness product for us to bring to employers And allow them to manage the, uh, testing and security of their workforce as a turnkey solution that we could provide as event.

And, um, look, this entire industry is eight weeks old. The needs, we're just figuring out what employers need. What we found, what we are sure of is after kind of coming up with this idea that we could bring COBIT 19 testing to work places and facilities, um, the demand has shown us that this is a need that businesses really have.

Um, the difference being no one wants to be in charge of managing 500 doctors notes from testing centers of varying repute. And are they real? Were they good tests? Were they the right test? Can they even read if it's a positive or negative result versus having one report given to the employer that can show their entire workforce on one dashboard? And that's the difference in what we decided to bring to the workplace.

Yeah, I think that's so important. I mean that communication piece, and you're right, you could be managing paperwork from all over the place. And I can tell you that the HR executives right now are more than overwhelmed. So Yeah. Well, there are bad actors out there. Um, everybody's read the news stories in California, there was a tent set up where for,

for, for lack of a better term, people were sticking Q-tips on people's noses and charging them a hundred bucks. Like, I mean, there was no test that there's, there any crisis brings out the worst in humanity and there have been some real snake oil salespeople. Um, and you're in your workforce, you don't, it doesn't matter if you got a really good test.

If the person in the cubicle next to you got a bad test, then the employer has not effectively managed the outcome. Right. Risk. And that's, that's what employers really want to do. And one of the pointed to what John was saying is that knowing the types of testing they're being performed, you know, that's another problem, not just managing,

you know, that the test results. And then coming back from, you know, employees going to different testing centers and you presuming that the tests are being performed correctly, what type of tests are they doing? Cause not all tests are created equally and not all tests, you know, a test for the same thing. Um, even as it relates to,

to COVID And that's a lot from my employer is try to manage and stay on top of. Um, so again, we just saw this, there were certain employers that really recognized this need of, you know, a kind of a consolidated, um, testing solution. Yeah. So I'd love to learn a little bit more about, um, the best practices that you're seeing and,

and implementing. But before we do that, maybe you guys can just give us a quick, uh, you know, 30 seconds on your background. Of course. I'll let that to CARSTAR. So I, um, uh, grew up in Michigan, um, to Michigan for undergrad. And, uh, did my medical school and residency up in Michigan,

and then I came down to DFW, Dallas in 2011, um, emergency room physician by training and had, um, initially I actually, because I'm an ER doctor, I'd kind of looked at, you know, freestanding years at the time, had decided that really wasn't the best bet for me. So it got into, um, move to the urgent care space.

Just recognize a huge need for, um, you know, a lot of the things that we kind of saw in the emergency department were being done that were, uh, could have been done less for less costs elsewhere and you know, attempted the cost potentially for the same visit. And so that's what led me to open the urgent cares and just kind of really focused on that quality piece there.

Um, and as I said, you know, we've got several locations, our DFW, and we're continuing to kind of grow that business. Um, and then I would say for me, What are the names of your urgent care centers? Some science. Say that again? Sinai. S. I. N. E. I. Okay. And how about you,

John? I bring the safe work as a background in corporate logistics and event planning. Um, my background has absolutely nothing to do. Both of my parents were healthcare executives, but my background has nothing to do with health. I'm in the, uh, the restaurant and hospital corporate catering world. Um, but when Sinai urgent care started getting so many phone calls of whether someone could bring high volume Kogan 19 testing to their workplaces,

um, I was brought in to kind of handle, I said that to me that's just like a catering job and that's just like a corporate event. So we then layered on a concierge level, um, uh, event logistics program. Then we disrupts the workflow. And what's been really cool is to take my background and apply it to healthcare where now we have patient and uh,

average patient interaction is less than five minutes at one of our testing sites. And we have, uh, we have workplaces that thought they didn't have to shut down for the day, who can keep people working, send someone down there, backup in 10 minutes, and the, the Workday didn't even get disrupted. Sounds like we could use that kind of logistics and event planning services in healthcare overall.

So For like workforce testing then the world. Yeah. All right. So give us a, just a high level overview of how this works. Like how does it work? You showed us, you know, kind of how it could work in the chaotic kind of world, right? Like the HR person who's getting notes from 500 different, you know,

testing centers, you don't even know if it's, you know, you're leaving it up to the employee to figure that out. Right. Um, then you're having to figure out how you get the employee reimbursed. I mean, it's just sort of chaos. Um, so how does it work when it works in a smooth fashion and has great experience, you know,

for the employees? Absolutely. We'll tell you a little bit about the, the features that we think make, say fourth grade, please hear this is not an infomercial for safe work. Um, I'm going to stare into the camera and say, if it's not us be having a conversation about asymptomatic testing for your workforce with somebody, we are not here.

This is not a sales pitch. We hope this is educational. We're going to tell you about some of the features that we think differentiate us and if those are of great value to your workplace, great. We look forward to hearing from you. That's not what this is. What's really important so, uh, is that workplaces are testing their asymptomatic workplace.

What we do is we send a link to the HR professional, what we call our HR liaison at the company that link along with some guidelines and kind of a what to expect blurb and send to every employee who can then fill out the information at their leisure and pre-registered. That's a little bit of our secret sauce because that preregistration allows us to be completely ready on testing day as long as everybody pre-registered by 3:00 PM the day prior with lab requisitions already printed and all other kinds of stuff.

What does that mean to the, to the workplace patients come in. Have you ever been to a doctor's office where your paper is already done? It's incredible. Trust me, it'll spoil you and go to the doctor's office ever again. You walk in, your paperwork's already done. If you were able to preregister you walk right up. We have multiple Swampers who are swabbing everybody.

The entire thing, as I said, can take less than five minutes. We, we, we start to sweat a little bit. If it's taking seven to 10, most people say that was incredibly fast. Um, so from now that we've done the test, the job is not nearly done. The test is not the why. The test is the what,

the why is preventing outbreaks. So our work is hardly done just because we've processed the test. Now we work with our lab to get results in two to three business days. Anybody who promises you faster is likely, uh, selling you snake oil or certainly not a test that is FDA authorized and within the accuracy spectrum that that is best practice for testing within two to three business days,

we receive results. Um, if everything is negative, we, uh, use, uh, uh, we contact all patients to let them know that they're negative and send in a encrypted email that is HIPAA compliant. All of the results in aggregate to the HR liaison. If there are positive results, um, our medical professionals, I live, medical professional medical provider will contact all the positives.

Now this is huge. We always tell people, you know, you're asking us the questions about the test, the questions you need to be asking on what that, pardon me, what the hell happens if we have a positive, right? That's really the why of why we're doing this. So, um, one of our medical providers will live personal contact,

tell the patient, informing the results and give them professional medical advice on what to do next. We then send all the results in aggregate to the employer and work with the employer on the elements of what, okay, so what now we need to retest to different population. It's cetera. So, um, we, uh, we, that element of what happens at,

we are a quote testing company, but how we process convey and the actionable information we give with the results is really the value that we bring to an employer who wants to prevent the next outbreak. COVID19 testing does not stop coven 19. An employee, a vendor, a client will walk through your front door with COVID 19 shedding the disease. This is statistically almost impossible that it's not happening in your workplace,

that there is a risk to walking out your door every day. What we do is we are not people think that the testing company is looking at positives or negatives all the time. No, it's to I identify, isolate the positives and mitigate the potential for an outbreak. One asymptomatic infectious infected employee can spread coven 19 to 90% of the workplace in three weeks.

Our job is to find that one person on day one of that three week span, not you figured it out on after three weeks and 90% of the workplaces in fact. And one point of that too, it's interesting, I was talking to John earlier today, um, I'd actually just reading an article on time and I was talking about the importance of testing and how important that's going to play a role in helping,

uh, you know, players reopen their businesses and you can go back to work. And you know, one of the things that was interesting is they were, um, a doctor they've quoted in this article had said, you know, testing symptomatic peoples is what's important. And I would push back against that. We can identify symptomatic people. It's easy,

easier to tell someone has viral like symptoms. They have a fever, they have cough, they have, those are easy. What's the challenge is, and you know, so we were going to, you know, maintain distance from those people and I kind of isolate and quarantine them. It's the asymptomatic person. It's the one that's out there that you have no idea that they have it,

that they're going about their business. They, you know, they're interacting with, with people in the, you know, um, you know, coworkers in the workplace. Those are the individuals who are more likely to spread it. And I can tell you, having had, you know, granted we're doing, you know, because we have kind of a bit of selection bias because as I mentioned,

we screen out the symptomatic patients first before they get the test. But it's amazing how many of these, these employees I speak to afterwards that either AC, I have no idea because I had zero symptoms or in hindsight, maybe they had some symptoms that they thought were, you know, allergy related. You know, maybe they thought it was the mountain Cedar or something else that caused it and,

and just a little cough and a postnasal drip and maybe it's allergies, but in these positive patients, in all likelihood, that's probably the extent of their Covance symptoms. One of the other things that we know is that your ability to infect someone doesn't matter whether you have symptoms or not. And so I think there's this misperception that, Oh, if you don't have symptoms,

you can't spread it to other people and that's just flat wrong, Right? So all the energy that HR leaders are spending on figuring out who's, you know, doing the, the, um, you know, temperature checks, it's a lot of energy. And even if they don't have a temperature, they still could be spreading it to everyone. Um,

we, we, we in no way are we suggesting testing in lieu of symptom screening. We split them screen is the first step of our testing. What we are urging employers to consider is daily symptom screening layered on top of regularly recurring asymptomatic testing. It's not either or. It's and, and we urge employers to really consider that symptom screening alone is insufficient to managing or mitigating the next outbreak in your workplace.

So regular testing. So for example, if today had been a beautiful 85 degree day here in DFW, um, according to all our HR members, they're basically saying that no matter what you try to do at work, there's going to be a outbreak right after every single holiday. Um, so are you guys extra busy days after holidays or What we're hoping is that people,

and we're all laughing about it and Lord knows, um, seeding is full of, uh, people will be, uh, over each other's shoulders drinking Margarita's and, and we know what that may lead to, but it's almost like you don't turn your, you don't turn your burglar alarm on at home because there was a robbery next door. You turn your burglar alarm on every time they leave the house cause it's preventative.

An ounce of prevention is costs a lot less than a pound of cure. And so what we're hoping is not thinking, gee, I need to screen this week because people were out in barbecue this weekend. What we're hoping they think is recurring testing is my, is just a baseline that will identify the next potential infectious person who could create the next outbreak,

That consistency piece. And you know, I think back to, you know, time spent in the operating room and kind of it's, it doesn't matter that you've, you know, you observe protocols in terms of, you know, state sterile, right? And it do it 99% of the time, but you drop that 1% of the time. No,

it's, you have to be a hundred percent consistent. Right. And that's the important part is that kind of reliable recurrent testing, I think in, in, along with symptom screening is, is critical to keeping these employees safe. We haven't found, uh, in our recurring testing are our clients sometimes, are they, they are incredulous. What do you mean this?

We had five positives last, last week. We had no positives. Yeah. That's why we're doing this. Um, we, we've had, we've had, um, positive results from people who brought in a negative test from an outside company. Does that mean that that was a false negative or does that mean that they contracted it since getting that test?

Does it matter? No. Um, that's why recurring testing is so important. That's a great point. I'm curious how, how often are companies doing it? Like is it weekly? Are they doing it monthly? What, what are you seeing? That's a really good question. One of the most common questions we get, um, we're what we're not,

Dr Karr can give the most accurate kind of quote recommendation. Right now, the CDC doesn't have a flat out recommendation. So what we're telling people is it's, it's as off two tests are better than one. Three best tests are better than two. Once a week is better than once every two weeks, and once every two weeks is one better than every four weeks.

It's really a, uh, it's a matter of more testing is better than less testing. We have a patient or we have clients that test every two weeks, every 14 days, layered on with symptom screening. Uh, really does kind of give you that, that, that safety net, uh, on top of the symptom screening. Um, we have clients that are testing much more regularly than that.

And I will tell you that our medical staff is tested significantly more regularly than once every two weeks. We're testing more frequently than once a week. Sure. Is you're out there in the middle of all of it? Yeah. No, not only that, but we are providing a level of comfort to our clients. Look, nobody wants, Hey, when I showed up here and none of my staff had COVID

right? Like we want to make sure that the medicine do no harm is our first duty. And so we are making sure that we are screening and testing our staff regularly. I want to go back to something Dr. Carr said about, um, you know, obviously the positives. You're already selecting the symptomatic, you know, candidates out. Um, are you able to share,

do you have the aggregate sort of statistics on what percentage actually end up testing positive out of every hundred or a thousand or what's that look like? Um, I would say right now it's somewhere in that kind of three to 5% range. Okay. Um, so it's, it's interesting cause if you look at the overall, um, percentages of, you know,

the number of individuals that test positive, it's lower than that. But again, a lot of those statistics that you hear quoted in various media sources have been focused on the past, you know, eight, 12 weeks where we've been selecting, I'll just do it at that time. We went through this period where we were having difficulty obtaining tests, obtaining the test materials that we were only really reserving the test for those who are symptomatic.

And for awhile, if you remember, it was only for those symptomatic or sick enough to be in the hospital. And so now we're where things are. Our testing is, it's much more ubiquitous. It's much more available. So as we start to test more people, um, we're starting to find out about these asymptomatic again, these asymptomatic carriers that we had no idea.

And so that's why we're kind of seeing somewhere in that three to 5% range is typical for what we're seeing in terms of positives. That being said, um, we've tested employers where, um, you know, uh, we'll do one round of testing at and they might have, you know, no one test positive and then you could come back and subsequent round of testing,

you know, as John said, that they're almost surprised when they see, you know, five, 7% of their workforce. And it's like, well this is identifying these individuals, getting them out, kind of removing them from that population and seeing who else could be at risk. That's again, what's going to prevent it because absent doing that, I can only imagine if you had waited a month,

what kind of numbers you would have seen. And then that workplace, They give the numbers. Dr. Karr gave some context, right? There's a big discussion of herd immunity. You know, Whether the spectrum, you know, the, the argument in this country is no on the low side is it two to 3% of the population that's infected on the high side,

is it four to five, five to six, six to 7% of the population. Herd immunity occurs at 70%. Just to give, uh, the people watching this, this piece, some context, we are so nowhere near herd immunity that whether we're on the low side of the estimate or the high side of the estimate doesn't really move the needle. And as employers are thinking,

Oh gosh, if I just start testing and seeing this percentage, like maybe I'm going to find out my whole warehouses, we have heard immunity. You'd be the first in the country if you did. Like, it's just not, it's, that's not a, That's not statistically probable at this. Even if you look at New York city where it's been kind of at the epicenter in the U S for this outbreak,

I think they said it was round 30% had when they'd done reliable antibody testing. Um, only about 30% of it. The whole city actually had antibodies to it. So again, even in New York where it's been something I locked down there, they're not even halfway to where they need to be to be, you know, to where we would call it herd immunity.

Yeah. Just speaking of antibody testing, um, I really appreciate it. John, what you told me earlier about how there's nothing medically actionable that you can take or something you can do. Right. So tell us about, you don't provide antibody testing that correct. I'm going to speak now. I'm sitting next to a doctor, so I'm going to speak,

I'm going to speak, I'll give the intro, but I'm gonna let Dr. Carr really speak to this. Um, the outside of a antibody test clearly States for research purposes only when we're talking about the findings of an antibody test, um, I know it's not a medical term, but the findings are interesting. What they aren't necessarily is medically actionable. And Dr. Karr

can say what things we can extrapolate, extrapolate from the quote interesting aspects of them because it does help you make some risk management decisions. You know, it can be utilizing that. But from a medical standpoint, um, one, there are just too many false positives and I want to be very clear. Infection testing or FDA authorized gold standard infection testing,

false positives are not statistically significant. Imagine sticking a swab in somebody, for lack of a better term. There is really very little way to find a virus that isn't in there. The antibody test is very, very different. And the way the, the what the way it tests absolutely can find false positives. So one of the things is we're talking about testing as before we talked about antibody testing.

We need to make sure it's very clear for employers to understand you have very little risk of false positives. No statistically significant risk of false positives with infection testing. Um, where the ..., when you hear people even very, very educated, um, uh, sources talking about testing, they don't always tend to make a differentiation between antibody testing or we call immunity testing and infection testing.

They are very different with very different data accuracies. So, um, the testing we have been talking about in workplaces is infection testing. Now dr cars can talk a little bit about antibody testing. Yeah. And I think it's important, you know, to touch on, even before I get into just pure antibody testing, kind of giving an overview the landscape of the different types of tests that we have available.

So the type of testing that we, um, are promoting, but um, offering to, to clients is that PCR testing. So PCR is preliminary chain reaction and what it involves doing is looking for little segments of the virus itself in a patient sample and kind of replicating those and testing and detecting those. Okay. So that's kind of the, that looks for active infection.

You also have this antibody testing which can indicate sometime after an infection if an individual was exposed to a virus or pathogen. So with, um, with coronavirus that, you know, we do see that, that people will have these kind of, um, acute and chronic, you know, longterm antibodies that can fall. Um, but it's uh, as John suggested,

you know, that testing is fraught with a number of problems. One of them being that you can have a um, positive test result to antibody testing that would indicate could be from Krone virus. Um, the COVID19 coronavirus could be from one of the other coronavirus variants. It could be from some other type of respiratory virus. It's similar in structure to the coronavirus.

Furthermore, there were, and we saw this early on, I um, I say I laugh about it, but it's pretty sad. Unfortunately. We were contacted by a, an HR wellness company. I'm working with one of the major oil companies and they said, we have all these antibody tests. I want you to come run them for our employees.

And I said, well, explain to me these tests that you have cause cause arena for these employees that they helped to take, take, take care of. And when they started describing the test to me, I said, I can't, I'm not going to advocate that test because I don't, you can't, you know, I don't know what's your test for that test doesn't tell you what you think it does.

Um, at that time, actually there had been a news story, a ProPublica piece about somewhere that was like Amarillo where they at some of the purchase to half million dollars of antibody tests that turned out to be bogus. The FDA actually sees them. And so, um, again, we weren't gonna we weren't going to, um, promote or utilize a test that gives bad information.

And additionally, you know, I had, um, the, some of the major lab corporations, companies, publicly traded labs, um, that we know of had initially come out with their serology or antibody testing. And what's amazing is initially they came out kind of with their price and if you've seen they've, they've been kind of settling, lowering the price,

obviously the way to promote or push this test. And I went ahead and said, you know what? I'm going to get my measured, maybe I've possibly been exposed. Let's see if I have antibodies. And you know, as John alluded to the disclaimer in the bottom of that about how this is for research purposes only and it doesn't guarantee that you,

you could have antibodies, you could not have antibodies in this, you know, it's, and even if you have antibodies and even if you have antibodies that are from COVID 19 it doesn't mean you couldn't get it again until all of these things are reasons why again, for certain populations I think it could make sense to do antibody testing. And I think over time this will be a different conversation in six or nine months.

I think as it's, as the disease, the virus has made its way through the population, I think we will see a greater role for antibody testing. But as of this time, it's not something that we are advocating, you know, writ large for employers. I think there's the one, Everybody's had a cold in February or March is convinced they had it and they want to get an enterprise test because they think they can just all of a sudden run out.

And That's the thing. So when it comes to testing, what we really find is, you know, and you've heard me say this a couple of times, there's the what and there's the why. When people say, do you have antibody testing? What are they really saying? Do you have a test that can tell me everything's going to be okay?

I'm Bulletproof and I don't have to worry about this anymore. And unfortunately the answer is that product doesn't exist yet. The second, the second it exists after I give it to me and all of my loved ones, I'll come bring it to every employer in town, but it doesn't exist. And it's the people, the people offering it with that. Pardon me?

It's a little bit of a come on it. Those are the bad actors out there. I be what? So when people, when we talk to people at infection tests and so what about antibody testing? What are they really saying? Why do I have to keep testing these people who have no symptoms? And when can I stop? Well, the antibody test is being presented as a solution to that.

And that is, uh, it is magic beans. It's not reasonable to serve the purpose that people want it to serve. If you will share that with the second question I asked you. If you want to know whether maybe two to 3% of your workforce has had it where maybe four to 5%. Okay, great. Interesting. What are you going to do with that information?

You're not at 70% and you're not even sure if the two to three or the four to five is even accurate. So great. You have some data. It's very, very cloudy data and it's not Actionable. And one other kind of point on that is that, um, even with the, this antibody testing to the extent that it can provide value as it could indicate previous infections and it can potentially used in workplace to allow certain workers to go in different areas,

maybe congregate a bit more, there might be some decisions that can be made related to that. Going back to what is it that allows employers to actually mandate or, um, offer, you know, provide this testing for, uh, for their employees. It's this EOC ruling that came out, well that's about preventing an infection and an outbreak. It's not about testing people to see what they could have had previously.

And so I think that's another thing that, that, you know, the, these, you know, HR leaders need to think about is, well, I know that, you know, I understand that there's some EOC ruling that says I can do testing, but it doesn't say you can do the antibody testing. It says you can do the PCR testing,

what practice infection. So again, I think that that's an important distinction that these HR directors and, and uh, you know, leaders need to understand. Gotcha. I haven't heard something about, um, OSHA this last week saying that it could be, I'm like, you know, this freaked all the HR folks out, right? Cause it's like saying you can be held accountable as an employer for your employees getting the flu from each other.

No, I know. Sorry. And that was actually something that, you know, we're putting together a kind of a, um, you know, we're gonna be releasing a white paper just based on the information that we've culled from all these different sources. But that's part of it too, is there's this OSHA obligation to keep your workplaces safe. Employers have an obligation.

And so I think that the attitude of just like, well we're just gonna let people come back in and they're probably going to be fine. That's, you know, that's pretty risky, risky approach to take. And I know John is a, is a business owner obviously. Probably has some thoughts on that too. Yeah, look, I have a hundred employees of my own outside of safe work and um,

they are my work family. I see them more than my wife and kids as my wife often reminds me. And um, it is, it is both good business, more over good morality and good empathy to want to keep these people safe. Especially in a world where we're telling people, come off unemployment, give up what uncle Sam is telling you is sure thing to come back to work.

We've heard horror stories of, um, of people saying, I'm, I'm terrified to stay home because I might lose my job and I might lose the roof over my head. Meanwhile, my spouse is terrified for me to go to work that I might bring something home that can kill my mother-in-law. These are awful. And um, on previously unimagined it,

uh, unimaginable decisions that I would say American workers, but global workers are having to make white collar workers, um, on down. These are decisions and heavy, heavy decisions that, that employers are having to make. And my gosh, do you, do you get sued for not requiring that or did you get sued when the, when the attorney says that you made somebody wear a mask and it gave him anxiety?

Um, I mean, God, Lee, I don't envy any of the heavy decisions HR leaders are having to make today. This is, this is, this is all new. But Dr. Carr said something that was significant and that is the government is trying to back employers to keep him to keep employed and workplaces safe. And one of the big backings they did was the EOC mandate that employers can mandate that their employees get tested and can do so at the workplace.

Um, the reason for doing so is the risk of infection. And that's why Dr. Carr said when we're talking about antibody testing, that is now some pretty shaky ground on whether you can mandate that to your employers. So one of the things that we hope that the viewers are what we hope is when you say I've got, I'm getting 10 calls a day from testing companies and I think they may have been selling Bitcoin eight weeks ago and gosh,

they were probably selling fitness T's before that. How can I judge if these people are full of it or not? Their opinion on antibody testing is a really interesting Canary in the coal mine. We are not saying, look, there's some hard questions out there and I'm not saying safe work has the only answer. Um, the, you know, dr Fowchee is the first to tell you that we don't know everything about this.

Okay. But I can tell you that our attitude towards antibody testing is thoughtful. It's considered, it's measured and it is transparent. The people are coming in saying, yeah, we'll give you every test we got. You want to antibody testing is your insurance coverage cool, let's do that too. Then you're getting some Dane, you're, that is a sure sign that Pete,

that a testing company is not quite as serious and isn't maybe a little bit more of a gold rush than it is a thoughtful and sincere healthcare company. And I can imagine, and they're, you know, again touching on with the John sane where let's say you had an employer union, successive rounds of testing and throughout a period of, you know, weeks to months,

you notice that, you know, certain members, their workforce test positive for the virus and they don't have symptoms. Let's say if we kind of come back to work and, and you can prevent that outward that takes out closes the office entire. Right. I can imagine having that conversation with, with that employer and saying, you know, you've had a large percentage.

Personally, I don't know that we necessarily need to be testing everybody on every round going forward. Right? Because you've already had a number of individuals who have tested positive and so maybe we do start to think about a strategy based upon the reliability of the testing at that time that we started to test people for antibodies and establishing, Hey, you know, you actually have a workforce that's looking like they're,

they've developed some immunity that would suggest to me to maybe not test all of that workforce every, every time we go out and do testing. So we do see a role for it. Right. It's not that we're seeing, we don't, we don't see when or we don't ever see one, but I think right now it's just, it's not proven.

And I think until we get to the other part, you know, so we start talking about a significant percentage of a, of a workforce having had the virus. I think just any discussions of antibody testing or prematurity, especially if it's a company deciding to do one type of testing or the other. I have yet to hear an argument for antibody testing over infection testing.

You're doing regular infection Testing and you want to layer on some antibody testing. You got the, either you know your insurance is covered or you've got the budget or you're not mandating it. So I mean, great that then that's a tool. It's an imperfect tool, but it's a tool and this is for research purposes only. Do come on, let's get some research done.

But it can't be this Bulletproof vest that gives them employees or employers misconceptions about the risk of an outbreak in their workplace because it just isn't. Right. Let me ask you this. Um, what industries are you seeing the most testing urgent testing? Um, I unfortunately need to answer that question slightly differently. What industries are we seeing the highest need for testing,

whether testing is occurring to meeting that need quite yet? One of the reasons we were excited to do this blog is we're excited to help educate people. I said, if it's not a conversation you're having with safe work, it's a conversation that we need to be having with a reputable taste testing company. Um, we are seeing a lot in the, um,

interesting film in production. They are struggling to open production anymore. Number one, just the insurance costs on um, ensuring talent. Everybody saw the famous actors and actresses that have got, we're contracted Cobra 19, who's going to go get, um, you know, Missy Elliot in their commercial shoot when you can't guarantee Missy Elliott is not going to walk out of there without an infection.

So I'm testing. We are, we are shocked. We never would have, when we drew up our business plan, we didn't think it would be production companies are reaching out to us about that incredibly, um, landlords, landlords, um, for whom the people watching this video, maybe a tenant in Lords are asking us to come do this in their buildings for all of their tenants and almost a commercial.

Yes. And retail. We're having a lot of conversation with landlords. Let's be honest. Landlords are everybody who's watching this. You, um, you're someone, somebody is having a conversation with your landlord right now about why rent is delayed or needs to be refunded or whatever. Um, this is an effective way that landlords can help reduce the barrier to entry of tenants coming back in and setting back up shop,

um, manufacturing companies, manufacturing companies of course working in close settings. And these are the, these, they can't work remotely. You can't work on a production line from your living room. Um, so, uh, food processing plants. Um, but you know, I would be lying to, I would have it is everyone. Um, we are selling oxygen and everybody when they realize they need to breathe,

uh, they're, they're reaching out to us or, or other reputable testing companies. Um, it's, it's whether it's, I mean, just, I could, I can tell you some recent customers, um, um, nationally, internationally known white companies. And then that afternoon we will do a, a smaller, um, Capitol management company. And then it's a company that sells a furniture and deck and,

and has a big warehouse. Um, basically our clients are calling us and asking us, um, you know, when they find out what does it cost for us to close down for a day, what does it cost for us? Um, we have a potential client, we're talking to her, the number, their policies, they're getting sickly. Anybody who has what they believe to be coven 19,

like symptoms, they're spending more money on paying people to sit at home who may not open 19 than they would be to be testing their entire workforce to see if they opened 19. Um, so, uh, it's, it's the right economic value for lots of different sectors covered. Say that one more time from an insurance health insurance perspective. So doctor Caren nor I are legally authorized,

nor are we, uh, in any position to give employee benefits. Um, advice or counsel can flashing light on the screen. That was, that was the disclaimer. Okay. Having said that, um, the family first act States that insurance carriers have to cover the claim that any co-insurance high deductible or copay from, um, from testing. So now the answer to the question was,

was it covered? Um, yes, we have. We've, most of our clients are dealing with insurance or getting it covered on their employees plans. Um, can be guaranteed that your carrier will cover you. Um, carriers get sued all the time for not doing what they're legally supposed to do. So we cannot speak for the carriers, but yes,

the law States that they have to cover. And I can tell you from where we have built insurance, even with recurrent testing so far, we have not had any insurers who have pushed back and not cover the cost of the claim, including the cost sharing. Again, it's what's going to happen in the future. It's tough to say a lot of that that really had to do with also as long as you're in this kind of state of emergency,

that's where this cost sharing portion has been waived. So what's going to happen going forward is going to be a separate question. But um, as of this date, we have not had any denial of clinics. So we hope that the people watching this video and I get, whether you're talking to us or any other reputable testing company, what we hope you hear is the government is allowing you to mandate that your employees take this test.

And the government, if you have an employee benefits plan, is mandating the carriers to cover it at no cost to your employees. So what we're really hoping is the question is not why test, it's why not test where I've yet to hear the why, why are we not doing this? We, we, we laugh, we don't, we're not making,

we don't make sales calls, we talk. It was like, can we please come test it? Your company, can we please provide this service to your patients? I mean, to your employees, we call them patients. And what an incredible service and what incredible benefit you can be given to your employees. Now, if you're not self-funded, this is us,

you know, we can, this is at a very low or no cost to the company and at no cost to the patient. Well, and also I think the way you handle the, um, the communication to the employee on the back end is so important. Right? And imagine the emotional impact of, you know, a false positive even I had done so just having that handled and,

and uh, I can't even imagine if you're trying to do this ad hoc and just sending your employees to whatever drug you know, drug store and even if they're reputable, dealing with all the, a fragmented approach versus saying here, handle it. And it sounds like it's quite a white glove kind of approach. We're talking to a summer camp right now.

It's a very popular summer camp that uh, kids in Dallas go to and a camp mom, they said, you have to show a negative test to come to camp. And the camp mom said to me, I know, um, uh, I know a reputable play. Actually she had gone to Sinai urgent care. She um, and she lives right near Snider Plaza.

She said to me, what if my daughter's bunk mate went to those places on the side of the road? And I mean, think about that eight weeks, your kid, I mean, Lord knows, everybody knows what kind of disgusting germs are passed around in summer camp cabins. I was, I was a camper. Like we all know what that is.

You're living out of a trunk and all, I mean, how is there not going to be an outbreak in a summer camp this summer? And how could a summer camp be responsible for managing a bunch of doctor's notes from various States in various forms? How do they even, I can't even imagine that. And so like, we all know what it feels like,

you know, uh, uh, you know, to deal with family members. Your work is your family. How do you know the person in the cubicle next to you got a good test and, and I'm sorry, please. It's hard enough out there. We're in a recession, we're all struggling. We're all dealing with all kinds of issues. Not knowing if the person next to you in asymptomatic shedder of coven 19,

I think is something that every, I don't want to call it a right, but I certainly think it's damn close than an employee should have at least a piece of mind to know that their workforce, that their employer is doing everything possible, especially well, we'll cover it to make sure that it's A safe workplace. And it's funny that, you know,

John, something he mentioned and kind of makes me laugh a little as you know, or again, early on when when testing was first starting to become available and uh, I remember I got an email, I was getting this barrage of emails about these antibody tests that were available. We'll sell you antibody tests and bulky antibody tests and what am we're looking at?

And it was coming from a guy who, uh, it was a law firm and I guess that their law firms just struggling for business. They were trying to promote, Hey body tests and then I've ever seen a day spa down the road. Not far from where we are in, in, um, in one of our clinics was going to be offering an antibody testing.

Unfortunately, again, in that case they, um, the County got involved and was able to kind of shut that down. Uh, but the point, you know, to go to the point at which I'm saying that managing all these different test results done all different times could have been spread out weeks apart. Um, from all these different providers, different notes,

different standards, even if it's a good test was performed correctly. All of these variables, it's enough to, even when you're doing everything correctly, it's a lot to think about. But when you start layering all these extra complexities, I think it just, if under it underscores the importance of, of having some, you know, reliability with the testing.

You know, the other thing too is as you touched on that the issue of you get a positive test result, well now runs and how can I be positive? And then a couple of days later, you know, uh, but someone of my house got tested a few days later and they tested negative. And how has that positive, well, how's that possible?

Well, this is kind of explaining to people, you know, people are, um, rightly so pretty concerned about this. And so being able to give that extra, um, security and that's, you know, I, again, I would ask the, you know, the, the decision makers in these companies is when you get those positive results,

are you the one that wants to take those phone calls and have to explain the science behind it? And there's so much fake news and bad information. You know, I saw a recent statistic and they said that 50% of the tweets right now about COVID are being done by bots, which tells you that there's a lot of bad information out there. And so I think having a trusted partner that's going to help parse through all of this,

the noise, cut through the noise and find the signal and figure out what is the information that employers need to know. And employees need to know that's critically important. It's not something businesses need to focus on. What they're designed to do, which is to conduct whatever business, whatever industry they're, they're not designed to worry about testing what, let find someone else to worry about that someone you can trust.

Um, so this is a little bit of a tactical question, but after they're tested, how long before they are getting results back? Two to three business days. Okay. So I'm going to anticipate a follow up question. What is the point of a test? If I got a negative on Monday and I find out on Wednesday, what if I got it on Tuesday?

Okay. Um, The answer to that is that's why we have recurring testing. And that's why you, it's not, it's not a map. It's not magic. It's a snapshot in time. You assemble enough snapshots and then becomes a movie and it's just a snapshot in time. So let's take as many snapshots as possible and we're going to see what this looks like.

In theory, if we can test every hour of every day, we'd have a pretty good little movie there. Right? But we can't, so we had to, yeah, no kidding. So we have to figure there's some balance, right? For some companies, again, it also depends on the unique aspect of the company. Some companies work nine to five Monday to Friday with a stable workforce.

They have no vendors coming in. They see no clients. Well that's a little bit of a different place than we've been to job sites where there are sub workers, you know, subcontractors coming in and different people working in the am and the PM and it's a seven days. Okay. So we help employers kind of determine it look like what's overkill, what is it,

what kind of recurring testing gets you the results you're looking for? We have employers that just what we call one and Doug's, they just want one test. I want to see it. I checked that box. I feel like I did what I could, you know, and that it's better than nothing. Right. Parting words of advice to our HR leaders out there who are dealing with this.

I would like to urge everyone, um, there seems to be this debate and it often seems to have an R or a D next to it of should we be reopening our economy or should we be prioritizing public health? And I urge everyone that it's not either or, and I own five businesses. I want to get this economy openness fast possible. My name is down.

It's down badly. Okay. It is at the same time, it w testing is a tool to help us reopen the economy by using public health resources. And so we urge people, please don't think of it as um, damn the torpedoes. We're reopening or we're going to be careful and that you have to make that choice. We're urging people you,

you can reopen your business and also protect your workers and do good public health by using testing. It's an, it allows you to do both. It's not a, it's not a concession. It's a tool in, in my, I guess partying words would be, you know, as a lot of employers are deciding, know they've been in this Kind of locked down working remotely.

Um, you know, the question is again, well if I can work remotely, why not continue to do that? Right? We've seen employers this last week in certain, you know, Twitter and Facebook basically saying they're going to allow their employees to potentially work indefinitely from home and for certain types of workforces and certain types of employment that may make sense.

But a lot of the more forward thinking employers that we've been speaking with have said, we recognize a loss no matter how good our people are. We've had a loss of productivity and there's a dollar amount associated with them. And for them it was, it was a pretty simple calculation. They knew that in order to make this, uh, in order to get things back to where they want to in terms of productivity,

it was going to have to involve some kind of testing. And so I think that's one way, you know, hopefully a lot more employers are starting to kind of frame the conversation. Um, and the second part is for those who are open already and thinking that it's, it's not going to necessarily be a problem. I think it's just a matter of understanding what is the cost of an outbreak,

right? What is the cost of having such a large number of your employees test positive that you have to close for two to four weeks, right? Essentially re isolate, warranty everybody, right. That is the, I can only imagine how that, how difficult and harmful that could be to a lot of businesses right now. And so I think understanding it from that point as well as just it,

it's very, it maybe it helps to kind of frame things in a way that makes this decision a little bit easier. So, okay. Dr. Carr and I are available, um, and uh, you have our contact information. Okay. Post your contact information and your website on the, in the show notes. We're available for any amount of, look we,

we are, we are missionaries in this. We fully, we are trying to spread the gospel of testing. As I said, this is not an infomercial. We hope, we hope that we have moved the needle on people considering testing as, as, as a significant tool in their tool belt on preventing an outbreak in their workplace. Um, it does not come with any strings attached.

If anybody wants to reach out to us further to discuss specifics, ask follow up questions, it would be our pleasure to help and be a resource to your group. It's very generous. Thank you. And I think as, um, you know, the summer is nearing, um, you're seeing a lot more people getting together, um, you know,

outside the office and you know, quite frankly, it could create sort of a false sense of, um, security, right? Just being able to get out in the fresh air. And so it's becomes more and more important for the employers to have some mechanism, right. To gauge, um, the risk. And also, I think just for the,

um, the folks who are out there who have to go into the office, it's going to become, um, you know, like the employer of choice type thing. Right. And like you said, if it, if I have to go and risk risk, um, being at the office and not having known if my coworker is a potentially affected me,

we don't, you know, you're going to go somewhere else that's going to provide this staffing. So ends of benefits. I think employees will start inspecting it. My mom is a 66 years old, so my mom, if I'm not supposed to say that she doesn't look 67 and um, she was asked to come off unemployment to a fortune 500 company where she was,

she my mom, my mom is in high risk age and my dad has a respiratory issue. She was asked to come back. He was promised there would be distancing, that there would be masks. None of the above were offered. She was asked to interact with um, uh, clients, uh, within six inches and kind of a open retail setting and actually do the temperature screening by 66 year old Merck not wearing a map,

be told she didn't have to wear a mask and these people didn't have to wear a mask. And I urge employers to just consider that this is like what they're, what people are being, what is being asked to people. And that my mom said I would've felt so much better if there had just been testing there. Like if there've been testing, I think I could probably would have even bitten the bullet and done it.

But she resigned, as you said, it wasn't it, this person did not meet her standards of an employer and she had worked there for seven years and was a top performer in the, in the country. Yeah. Yeah. You hear stories about that all the time. Or even people working from home and they've got kids at home, right? So their hours of work are from 10:00 PM or 9:00 PM until 3:00 AM like,

I hear this over and over again, and that can't be good for your health. So now you're even more susceptible and next time you go to the grocery store. Right. We don't envy the choices and the risks that HR professionals are woke up in this black mirror episode that they have to make every day now. And we hope that we hope testing can relieve a little bit of the stress on HR professionals and they can see this as well.

This is a really great tool that I have to take away some of this confusion and we hope that, uh, they can find reputable testing companies and ours is name safe work. If that's something that can be helpful to you, Okay, well I'm going to post your contact information, but if you get bombarded with too many calls, we'll do maybe a joint zoom call where everybody can do their Q and a out altogether.

It's our pleasure, but also we will be working those crazy hours responding individually to every person who contacts us because we really appreciate the opportunity to speak to a group like this. This is a people that we really respect and people that we want to help. Well, whatever we can all do to get America back to work. Amen. Absolutely. Thank you