COVID-19 message from David Slade
Slade Health update – Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Slade continues to closely follow the impact of COVID-19 across Australian States and Territories to ensure our response remains relevant. As restrictions start to ease and people are able to move more freely around the country, we would like to reaffirm our commitment to operating in a COVID-safe environment and ensuring the supply of high-quality compounded products for our customers across Australia.
Our current actions continue to focus on protecting three key elements of our business:
- The health and safety of our workforce
- The distribution of our compounded products
- Our supply chain for essential materials and services
Our management and production teams continue to meet daily, reviewing the latest government advice and putting necessary protocols in place to support our business continuity plans.
Health and safety of our workforce
Extensive additional controls within our facilities are being maintained. These actions are designed to minimise the risk of transmission within our teams and the number of people who would potentially be quarantined in the event of a confirmed case. These measures will allow us to maintain supply in the case of a potentially reduced workforce.
Our actions include:
- Comprehensive wellness screening of staff prior to commencement of shifts, including temperature checking, visual health checks, screening questions at entry points and completing wellness declarations
- Heightened cleaning and sanitisation regimes throughout our facilities, including between shifts and change of personnel
- Transition to remote working arrangements for any staff who are not essential to production
- Introducing split shift teams to limit the risk of spread
- Heightened controls to mitigate risk from commonly touched surfaces or potential congregation points, alongside enforcing strict social distancing measures
- Ceasing admission of any non-essential persons to our facilities and restricted movement of couriers between facilities and our customer base
- Implementing additional PPE for production teams and comprehensive training to ensure effective donning and doffing
- Conducting training and qualification of our wider workforce to enable adequate back-up if essential production teams are affected. This includes upskilling and reskilling of staff to assist with essential duties if required.
We have developed detailed business continuity plans that will allow us to leverage capacity across all our Slade Health facilities should one site be unable to complete daily orders. A number of scenarios have been accounted for and we are ready to adopt these rapidly if the situation requires.
Our highly engineered cleanroom facilities and equipment, alongside our trained and validated staff and processes, are designed to protect the integrity and safety of all our compounded products. Our experience and resources in this area, and the high level of process control and attention to detail required to achieve compliance in a GMP environment, put us in good stead to reduce risk across our highly-skilled production teams.
Distribution of compounded products
Our dedicated logistics team is ensuring the ongoing movement of product from our facilities to our partner hospitals.
The team provides live tracking updates and is maintaining a continuous dialogue with logistic partners to manage any flight disruptions.
We will adapt as needed; we have our own courier fleet and are engaging with emergency services to ensure life-saving medicines are delivered to you.
Supply chain
Our experienced procurement team have assessed the supply of all materials and services that are needed to operate our manufacturing facilities. Where supply is critical and we identify a risk of interruption to supply, we have taken action to mitigate that risk.
Each of our sites have warehouse facilities, which are maintaining sufficient buffer stock. We will move to alternate suppliers and materials as required, while continuing to work with the therapeutic goods industry and TGA to ensure essential medicines are available throughout this time.
Our commitment
Slade Health’s primary focus has always been to keep the patient at the centre of everything we do. We appreciate that you, our hospital partners, provide direct patient care throughout Australia.
Our teams have mobilised to protect our production capacity and the continued, safe supply of compounded products.
We ask that wherever possible, please place your orders for compounded products as far in advance as you can. This will help us significantly in scheduling manufacturing operations to maintain a consistent supply.
Our team will stay in close contact with you as we work through any challenges that may be presented. However, if you have any questions or concerns, please contact your local Key Account Manager.