Pandemic Flu
Is Your Company Prepared?

Each winter, the flu kills 36,000-40,000 Americans, hospitalizes more than 200,000, and costs the economy over $10 billion in lost productivity and direct medical expenses. As staggering as these figures are, health experts are now warning about something far more lethal-- a pandemic flu that could kill over a half of a million people, hospitalize two million more, and cost our economy an estimated $160-$675 billion.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has compiled this checklist to help you plan for the impact of a pandemic on your business and employees.

1. Identify a pandemic coordinator or team with defined roles and responsibilities for preparedness and response planning; the planning process should include input from labor representatives.
    
2. Identify essential employees and other critical inputs (raw materials, suppliers, sub-contractor services and products, and logistics) required to maintain business operations by location and function during a pandemic.
    
3. Train and prepare ancillary workforce (contractors, employees in other job titles and descriptions, retirees).
    
4. Develop and plan for scenarios likely to result in an increase or decrease in demand for your products and/or services during a pandemic (effect of restriction on mass gatherings, need for hygiene supplies).
    
5. Determine potential impact of a pandemic on company business financials using multiple possible scenarios that affect different product lines or production sites.
    
6. Determine potential impact of a pandemic on business-related domestic and international travel (quarantines, border closures).
    
7. Find up-to-date, reliable pandemic information from community public health, emergency management, and other sources and make sustainable links.
    
8. Establish an emergency communications plan and revise periodically; includes key contacts (with back-ups), chain of communications (including suppliers and customers), and processes for tracking and communicating business and employee status.
    
9. Implement an exercise to test your plan, and revise periodically.
    
10. Forecast and allow for employee absences during a pandemic due to personal illness, family member illness, community containment measures and quarantines, school or business closures, and public transportation closures.
     
11. Implement guidelines to modify the frequency and type of face-to-face contact (hand-shaking, seating in meetings, office layout, shared workstations) among employees and between employees and customers (refer to CDC recommendations)
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12. Evaluate employee access to -- and availability of -- health care services during a pandemic; improve as needed.
     
13. Evaluate employee access to -- and availability of -- mental health and social services during a pandemic, including corporate, community, and faith-based resources; improve services as needed.
     
14. Identify employees and key customers with special needs, and incorporate the requirements of such persons into your preparedness plan.
     
15. Contact BarnesCare for annual influenza vaccinations; call a BJC corporate health consultant at 314.747.5846 or e-mail BarnesCare.

Learn more about pandemic flu.