Asking ourselves everyday: What more we can do?
Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of
articles on how retailers are responding to the COVID-19 crisis.
This past month — for all Americans — has been unlike any other
experienced in our lifetimes. The heroic efforts of health care professionals
and others on the front lines of the pandemic have been truly inspiring, but we
all have a role to play in slowing and eventually stopping this unprecedented
threat.
At CVS Health, we’re in a unique position to
help due to our scale and unique set of capabilities that span the health care
continuum. We have an unmatched presence in communities throughout the country,
with nearly 10,000 pharmacies that remain open offering essential services
while many other businesses have been forced to close. We’re interacting with
millions of Americans every day, enabling us to understand where needs lie and
how best to address them.
The question we ask ourselves each day is this:
What more we can do? This mindset has led us to take several actions focused on
helping both our customers and our employees through these incredibly difficult
times.
One of the first steps we took as the pandemic
began to take shape was waiving charges for home delivery of prescription
medications. The more people we can keep out of our stores, the more we can
help minimize potential exposure to COVID-19. We also expanded access to 90-day
prescriptions and waived early refill limits.
To further encourage people to stay home we
increased access to virtual care by waiving telemedicine fees, which has
resulted in utilization among Aetna members more than doubling.
Broadening access to testing has also been a
central component of our response to the pandemic. We were the first of the
major retailers to open a COVID-19 drive-through testing center. Selfless CVS
Health nurses, nurse practitioners and pharmacists tested more than 200 people
per day at that site, with a focus on local first responders and health care
professionals, whose work is more important than ever.
We applied the significant learnings gathered
from that pilot site to open three rapid COVID-19 drive-through testing sites
in Georgia, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, in collaboration with federal and
state officials. Licensed health care providers from MinuteClinic, our retail
medical clinic, oversee the testing, which is currently available at no cost to
patients. The sites are utilizing the new Abbott ID NOW COVID-19 test, which
can identify positive results in as little as five minutes and negative results
in as little as 13 minutes.
For those that do test positive, we’re increasing
access to treatment by waiving cost-sharing and co-pays for inpatient hospital
admissions related to COVID-19. We want patients to focus on their care and
recovery, not their finances.
Through our Omnicare business unit, we’re also
helping people recover by working with existing nursing facilities — both our
customers and non-customers — to create designated nursing facilities to manage
COVID-19-only patients. This approach allows us to use our clinical pharmacy
expertise to support these patients, reduce the potential spread of COVID-19
and help people transition from hospital to rehab to home.
None of these initiatives happen without the extraordinary commitment of our nearly 300,000 employees, who are providing essential goods and services at a time when they’re needed most. As they take care of those we serve, we’re taking care of them.
None of these initiatives happen without the extraordinary commitment of our nearly 300,000 employees, who are providing essential goods and services at a time when they’re needed most. As they take care of those we serve, we’re taking care of them.
We’re working around the clock to provide
protective gear and other safety measures, including protective panels at our
pharmacies and front-store checkout stations. In recognition of their
commitment, we’re providing cash bonuses to pharmacists and certain other
health care professionals on the front lines, store associates and managers,
and other site-based hourly employees. And we’ve launched a new offering to
help employees with dependent care needs while providing sick leave to
part-time employees for the duration of the pandemic.
To provide our employees with much-needed
relief, we’re filling 50,000 full-time, part-time and temporary roles across
the country. The majority of these roles were open prior to the COVID-19
pandemic, but given the circumstances we will now fill many of them with
employees of existing clients who have had to furlough their workers.
Rising to meet a challenge, no matter how
daunting, is what we are built for. What we’ve seen from our employees and
people across the country over the past month gives us all strength and hope.
We’re in this together, and we’ll get through this together.
Larry Merlo is president and chief executive
officer of CVS Health.
No comments:
Post a Comment