Responding to the COVID-19 Crisis
At HCMC Legal our highest priority is to keep our employees safe while continuing to serve our clients during the COVID-19 crisis.
Our leadership and business continuity teams have been meeting daily to assess risks and create mitigation plans as developments arise. We have been monitoring reports and status updates from a variety of sources, including with World Health Organization (WHO), Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and local health organizations. We’ve provided all employees with the following link to the CDC www.cdc.gov.
Employee Information
Last week we communicated with all HCMC Legal employees informing the team that we are monitoring the news about the COVID-19 virus, and we encouraged them to do the same.
To minimize the risk of infection we urged team members to stay home to prevent infecting other colleagues if they:
- Are sick with symptoms of acute respiratory illness, or
- Have not been fever free for at least 24 hours without the use of any medication, or
- Have signs of fever, or
- Have been in contact with family members or other individuals with any of the above symptoms.
We encouraged the use of disinfectant wipes, hand sanitizer – supplied in bulk to every HCMC facility.
We reminded employees about how to prevent the spread of germs by taking these steps:
- Stay home if you’re sick
- Wash your hands with soap and water frequently. If soap and water is not available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.
- Coughing & Sneezing Hygiene Etiquette
We encouraged all employees to pay close attention to any announcements made by local health authorities and to visit www.cdc.gov with any questions about the COVID-19 virus or the seasonal flu.
Additional Cleaning
In addition to providing extra supplies of hand sanitizers, disinfectant wipes and tissues, HCMC has taken the following steps to ensure a clean work environment:
- Arranged with building management to take additional steps to clean all common areas (counter tops, doorknobs, etc.)
- Contracted with a national bio-hazard cleaning crew in the event one of our reviewers becomes infected with the virus.
Working Remotely
In the event a review center becomes contaminated, we will work with our clients to determine if a work at home situation is warranted.
- Determine with our client if we can move the review to another review site on a temporary basis.
- If the Review has local requirements, HCMC can provide a Remote Desktop Server (RDS), allowing reviewers to login to an HCMC hosted environment from their home computer.
- Once logged into the RDS a reviewer will have a virtual desktop with standard applications.
- Reviewers will only be able to access their HCMC email from this virtual desktop.
- HCMC will ensure that Reviewers have all documentation and support to connect to the RDS.
- If our client uses IP filtering for access to their Review Site, we will provide them the RDS Static IP, thus allowing reviewers to access the Review Site from their virtual desktop.
- The HCMC IT team will work directly with our clients’ IT teams to discuss additional technical details as needs arise.
Travel and Conferences
- We have canceled our attendance at national conferences including NALP and CLOC, and we are reviewing our participation at other conferences and events.
- We are limiting our business travel.
- We are requesting team members stay home if they have been on international travel or exposed to/have any symptoms.
At HCMC Legal we take great pride in providing the right staffing solutions to help deliver exceptional results to our clients. We will continue to monitor and report on the COVID – 19 situation and keep you posted on our efforts to maintain normal business operations while serving our clients and keeping our employees safe. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or to discuss the situation in more detail.
Sincerely,
Joan Davison
President and Chief Executive Officer