Workplace in Focus Podcast Episode 7 Transcript

Reopening means a refocus. Hear about approaches taken by CVS Health® and Aetna to bring employees back to work with Todd Lazar, Aetna Vice President & Chief Growth Officer.

[ANNOUNCER] You have questions about what’s impacting the healthcare system – from pandemics to products. We have answers. Welcome to Banner|Aetna Workplace in Focus. Now here's your host, Banner|Aetna Market Head of Sales, Jon Dingledine.

DINGLEDINE: Welcome everybody to this edition of Banner|Aetna workplace in focus. Today we’re excited to have with us Todd Lazar, growth officer at AETNA. Todd welcome. 

LAZAR: Thanks John. I’m really happy to be here. 

DINGLEDINE: So today we’re going to talk about getting return ready and getting folks back to work. So Todd. can you just describe to us what is return ready?

LAZAR: Yes of course. So it’s the way to think about its governments continue to reopen their economy, employers are looking to us for support and how to safely the return to business. As CVS Aetna we believe we’re very ready to help develop the solution that we’re really proud of. It’s called Return Ready. So Return Ready is a fully customizable COVID-19 testing solution that allows our employees or universities to choose who, how, where, and when the tests their employees or students. 

Our testing can be accessed via CVS Pharmacy locations and/or bringing testing directly on site. So in addition to just the actual testing, Return Ready also provides a couple of other things. Number one, it includes clinically informed guidelines for symptoms checking and temperature screenings. It also includes onsite licensed professionals to assist with COVID-19 testing. We provide turnkey instructions for use with employees and students. We also offer digital tools for test scheduling, results, and other areas of interest. There’s very robust reporting and analytics that’s provided to our customers to give them information for all of their custom locations. 

And then finally there’s the opportunity for additional add-on solutions that include things like thermal scanners, digital symptoms, monitoring, and then contact tracing technology. So we believe it’s a very robust solution that is drawing a lot of interest in the market, and again we’re super excited about it.

DINGLEDINE: Thanks Todd. I feel like I’ve read a lot about testing, I mean it’s everywhere. You can read how to test, where to test, what kind of test to take, how long it takes to get the test results back. Can you elaborate a little bit about how the testing component in this solution works? 

LAZAR: Yeah of course. I think what’s unique about our testing solution is it’s all about choice and kind of optionality. So we provide our customers the option around the type of technology that’s used. So that includes point of care testing. And point of care testing provides results in a few minutes, or the customer can choose to go with third-party lab testing, which takes a little bit longer, but depending on the need there’s a couple of different opportunities for them. And then the second is around location. So we offer two options around location. The first one is around is the ability to test onsite at an employer or university’s actual physical location. So that provides a safe environment where CVS Health can come directly and administer the tests to the employees or students. And we also offer a second option which is to provide testing out of a local community and make use of one of the many CVS Pharmacy Drive Thru Testing locations that you know are spread out across Arizona. 

But let me give you an example. Some organizations have very high numbers of employees that work in close proximity with each other. So in this case they may need very rapid testing and results. And they may choose on-site testing that’s administered by CVS Health to receive real time outcomes. Whereas other organizations may prefer testing that is lab processed that they can get back in a few days, because they don’t need it kind of real time. And that’s either conducted on site or directed through a CVS pharmacy location that might be closer to you know either an employee or the students’ actual place of residence. 

But the key here is that in either scenario it enables customers who have a large number of individuals to quickly get tested and get the results in a timely manner. Whether it’s real time or over the course of a couple days. And ultimately meet the unique needs of that particular customer. 

DINGLEDINE: So to that end, how is it decided who should be tested, and how frequently? How do we know? 

LAZAR: Yeah, great question. So we start with consultations. So we consult with our employees or universities to understand what their specific needs are, understand a little bit more around the population, whether it’s employees or a large group of students that needs to be tested. 

We’ve got four cohorts that have been defined right now and again they’re constantly evolving just based on you know what the latest clinical guidelines are telling us. But the first cohort is around a population that is symptomatic, and these are individuals who are showing signs or symptoms of the virus while they’re onsite. In this case this group needs to be tested right away and determine the results as quickly as possible. 

The second cohort is the asymptomatic or those that are not showing symptoms. So these are the individuals who run a higher risk of exposure and should be getting testing at a higher level of frequency. So they may need testing on a weekly basis right, because they you know are working a job where they’re in a hospital on a regular basis or they’re at a nursing home on a regular basis, or just somewhere where there’s a high density of kind of average populations. These are cohorts that you’re going to want to touch much more frequently than others. 

The third cohort is those individuals who are suspected to have or have had known exposure with COVID-19, and positive individuals. And then the fourth cohort is those who have previously tested positive for COVID-19 and now require validation you know that they are you know free and clear of it before we are coming close to work or campus. 

DINGLEDINE: We’ve got different groups of people that need to be tested differently according to guidelines. We’ve got different places you can test or get tested with different frequency and getting results and returns back. I know there’s a lot of different solutions out there, so how is this solution that we’re talking about today. How is this different from others and what do our competitors doing?

LAZAR: Yeah, first off, we know that we are not alone in both the interest and the ability to provide a COVID testing product. It’s so important right now right and the more options on the market better for addressing this debilitating pandemic. But what were extremely proud of, and what we believe is very competitive in the market is you know Return Ready and the amount of customization and optionality again that this solution offers.

I’ll go through again the three key areas. One is around flexibility. So we’re able to support high density worksites or campus locations and make us of putter retail to support a very distributed world force. So that roll that CVS, the employees in the community with our brick and mortar locations. We’re really complimented by our ability to be out and on site with the customer is really unique and hard to match out in the market. The second is around the robustness of reporting we can provide. And so whether that’s in an employee or student that uses our retail stores or receives testing on site. You know with either a swab and send type of process, or the point of care options we provide, we can give them the customer details on who was tested, where they were tested, what the results were, how they trended over time, how that matches you know the national or state level activity that’s happening in terms of where the hotspots may be or what type of infection rates we’re seeing. So the level of reporting is very powerful, and you know something that makes us unique. And then the third is just our access to clinical guidelines and consultation. As well as you know having CVS Health clinicians actually perform and administer the tests. It’s for these three reasons why we believe out Return Ready solution is the premier offering in the market. 

DINGLEDINE: You touched a little bit on reporting there, and obviously it’s at some point this really is all about the feedback. Who’s at risk. Who maybe is not at risk? I’d like to hear a little bit more about the data that’s available to organizations on an organizational level so they can conimune to make decisions. Tell us a little bit more about that. 

LAZAR: Yeah so think about this as a dashboard that’s available on a daily basis to our customers. So what I’m going to get as a Return Ready customer is a daily report that’s gonna be very easy to access. It’s gonna be updated to show all of the testing volume that has you know come through all of the locations that you know I’ve taken this solution on. The report will provide outcomes across these locations including very prominent alerts where we’re seeing positive latest results and then guidance on you know what to do next. 

So one of the most important things that this information can provide is the ability to help facilitate contact tracing and then the ongoing tracking of any positive individuals that can further help either avoid or control the outbreak.

DINGLEDINE: Thank you very much for all this information Todd. This is clearly something that’s ever changing. It’s certainly a piece of what’s happening with COVID that’s in constant motion. I know that employers as well as the general population are concerned, genuinely concerned, and want make sure that they’re tested and they’re safe and they’re you know operating whether at work on site or you know even if in their communities that they’re being safe. It’s really great that these options are available and whether organizationally or through a CVS what you call a brick and mortar location, so we really really appreciate you bringing this information to us band being on today Todd. 

LAZAR: Yeah John, happy to be here. We play and are so proud of the role that we have in the local communities. We’re embedded into the Arizona marketplace. We live and work with the population that resides in Arizona. So coming up with viable solutions to address this horrible  pandemic is super important to us and you know we’re very pleased with what Return Ready has provided to many employers thus far and we will continue to do so as the need for testing conditioned to accelerate well into the air. So I appreciate being here. Thanks. 

DINGLEDINE: Great. Thanks. And thank you to everybody for tuning in. Tune in again for another exciting episode and we’ll have another exciting guest on Banner|Aetna Workplace in Focus. Thanks.

ANNOUNCER: You’ve been listening to Banner|Aetna Workplace in Focus. Learn more at BannerAetna.com.