North Carolina

White House's Call for Increased COVID Testing Leaves Businesses with 100+ Employees Scrambling to Comply

WILMINGTON, N.C., Sept. 22, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The White House's six-pronged action plan calls for increased COVID-19 diagnostic testing in businesses, educational institutions and other organizations – a method that, while effective, leaves employers with 100+ employees scrambling to find ways to implement and track the new requirement, or face steep fines.

The White House's plan outlines methods to increase access to COVID-19 diagnostic tests, but large employers – who are now mandated to track vaccination status or weekly test results across their entire employee base – may be left with more questions than answers. For employers with hundreds or thousands of staff members, the question of "how" to track so many results on a weekly basis is pressing, especially considering that violating the White House's plan could result in fines up to $14,000 per incident. 

But even once the logistical headache of implementing such widespread testing is answered, another threat looms. Without a full audit trail of every employee's testing records, employers may still be at risk for fines if they can't defend themselves against alleged violations.

"These are waters most employers have never entered before, and it gets incredibly complex incredibly fast," said Brett Martin, CEO of infectious disease screening company CastleBranch. "Mandates mean continuously collecting sensitive medical documents from employees, tracking weekly diagnostic test results, and creating a documented audit trail while protecting the individual's private information from unlawful exposure. For the inexperienced, it's an unmitigated nightmare." 

To help large employers, colleges and universities, Martin's company created an essential tool kit: CB COVID-19 Compliance and RealVaccinationID.com. Included in CB COVID-19 Compliance is the company's Diagnostic Test Tracking solution, which helps organizations track the results of a diagnostic COVID-19 test via a secure, password-protected platform. The tool helps organizations protect the employee's private data and information, and also provides a detailed audit trail to help protect the employers from potential liability. The solution can be paired with  RealVaccinationID.com, which provides digital and physical proof of COVID-19 vaccination status while helping companies create a secure audit trail.

"COVID-19 represents one of the greatest existential threats to our health, safety and wellbeing any of us have seen in our lifetime," said Martin. "CastleBranch has the tools and experience to safely navigate the government's directive, and to help organizations and individuals manage the regulatory risks that come with handling protected health records."

CastleBranch, an infectious disease screening company with more than 20 years of experience, built this Essential Tool Kit with inspiration and guidance from some of the world's leading epidemiologists and pandemic disease policy experts. It's also been endorsed by both the Organization for Associate Degree Nursing (OADN) and the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), the nation's two largest nursing healthcare associations, representing more than 80 percent of nursing education in the country.

For more information, visit discover.castlebranch.com/rvid-resources

About CastleBranch:
Located in Wilmington, N.C., CastleBranch is one of the leading providers of vaccination, immunization tracking and diagnostic test tracking in the United States. With 25 years' experience, the company has collected, reviewed, and/or stored over 35 million medical documents for a majority of healthcare education programs across the nation. Their applications are designed to maintain strict compliance with state and federal privacy regulations; create a detailed audit trail along every step of the process; and to help organization handle the logistics of implementing a complex vaccine mandate at scale.

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SOURCE CastleBranch