Eight things you need in your screening platform to ensure an efficient semester

At this point in the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re used to preemptive symptom screenings before entering offices, campuses, and other facilities. But we’ve also learned that some methods are more effective than others - especially at the collegiate level where students, faculty and visitors need to be screened every single day. As a new semester starts, administrators across the country need to make sure they’re using the easiest and most efficient screening and case management tool available. 

Here are eight important aspects to consider when deciding how you’ll approach symptom screening this semester:

1. Does the platform you’re using require everyone to download an app?

Requiring everyone who visits your organization to download a mobile app can be a big ask. Not only does it add another step to the process that can be a barrier towards campus-wide adoption, it also means that you’ll need alternate protocols and submission methods for members of your organization who don’t have a smartphone. After helping organizations across the country send over 2.7 million screenings with a 98 percent response rate, we’ve found that simple SMS text messages are simple for your organization to respond to and manage.  

2. How are you making sure that your administrators and response team are receiving proper notifications at the right time?

When dealing with a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s important to make sure you’re notifying the right people about the right situation at the right time. Make responding appropriately simple for your team by using a platform like SAFER Screening by Healthy Roster that will automatically alert the correct members of your team as soon as action is needed.

3. Is your platform FERPA and/or HIPAA compliant?

Give your organization peace of mind by using a platform that follows strict privacy protocols. Your students, staff, faculty, and visitors should know that you value the security of their health information - whether it’s a daily screening, a test result, or a quarantine status.

4. Can the platform you’re using help your organization safely check for “cleared” students or faculty?

With many campuses returning to on-campus classes, you need to verify that everyone who shows up has actually been cleared through symptom screening - while also making sure that the staff members checking for that verification are safe. Make sure that the platform you’re using has a method of verification that is highly visible to allow for distanced confirmation and easy to display for your students and staff.  

5. How are you addressing screening visitors or people you don’t have contact information for before they arrive at your location?

Make it easy to address when someone shows up without prior symptom screening with a platform that allows for a Text to Screen feature like the one offered by Healthy Roster’s SAFER Screening. Visitors can simply text a code to receive the SMS-based screening and receive their clearance within 60 seconds. (Try it out here: Try SAFER Text to Screen

6. Does the system you’re using only handle screening or does it include case management too?

By now, you’ve probably realized that daily surveys or screenings are only a small aspect of an effective screening strategy - you also have to manage tons of different statuses that are regularly changing for hundreds if not thousands of people every single day. Your COVID response team needs an easy-to-use tool that makes everything easy from daily automated screenings to robust case management.

7. How does the platform you’re using help you manage various statuses?

From normal to quarantined to isolated, there are a lot of different statuses you’re dealing with everyday. The system you use should make it easy to see who is in what category, how long they’ve been there, how many people are in that status currently, and what protocols are necessary for every different status.

8. Does your current tool include proactive measures to help identify trends and potential hotspots?

Sometimes it feels like we’ve been playing defense for almost a year now when it comes to responding to this pandemic, so it’s important to find a screening and case management platform that will help you get ahead of potential outbreaks with proactive trend analysis and reports.

As you can see, there’s a lot to consider when you’re deciding how to conduct daily, automated screening and it can feel overwhelming. The good news though is that SAFER Screening by Healthy Roster can help with every single one of these crucial aspects of your response - from text-based screenings, to “Cleared” status screens, to HIPAA-compliant case management and response protocols. This semester, make your COVID response more manageable and less stressful with an easy-to-use, ready-to-deploy, and all-in-one platform like SAFER.

Learn more at an upcoming info session: