This is a communication to all our customers about our plans for the impact of the virus and likely government actions and restrictions, the effects on our employees, supply chain, customers and finances.

Initial planning has been around testing the move to a full, partial or combination home working format for none essential workers.

We are issuing some basic protection equipment – masks, gloves and anti-bacterial wipes. This will allow our Engineers to attend hospital sites to carry out essential and critical functions, however, this PPE will not be used if trust policy indicates otherwise as we do not wish to spread any unnecessary concern within clinical environments. Use of mobile phone and tablet communication may be necessary to permit social distancing, engineers have been advised to clean the surfaces of these devices regularly.
In addition to these measures our field engineering staff have also been advised to:

• Wash hands regularly and thoroughly throughout the day
• Limiting service intervention to critical calls only
• Limit social gatherings whilst not at work

The following has also been put into place:

• We have cancelled foreign business trips
• None essential customer visits have been stopped
• Restriction of service engineer movement to local sites
• Advising our field and office staff against foreign travel
• Updating staff on high risk environments

Shipments and equipment repairs – Social distancing may be applied in our stores department and workshop. We will endeavour to receive stock into our warehouse in a clean and decontaminated condition from our suppliers and customers and similarly we will expect customers to employ rigorous cleanliness regimes to equipment that have been received for repair on to our premises, it will then be cleaned and decontaminated for onward installation.

Stock – we have been stocking up on most products but it may be inevitable that shortages may occur in the supply chain. If you need an upgrade or refresh that requires new stock, place your order sooner rather than later so we can buy anything you need in advance.

Managing an infection within our team – If it transpires one of the team does show symptoms with the dry persistent cough and temperature, they will be asked to work from home for 7 days and we will amend their duties so they self-isolate. The Governments policy to slow the transmission using a combination of herd immunity and social distancing, will mean it is inevitable that staff will contract the virus and then in turn become resistant to onward transmission of it. This may cause installations and site visits to be postponed at short notice. We will adjust our schedules to allow some flexibility, but we cannot plan for multiple infections. If this does occur, we will prioritise the site visits to the neediest and suspend installations to all but essential works. As an SME, a surge of infections will pass through the business quickly and we will soon be back to normal, so any disruption will be temporary.

Supply Chain – We have no immediate worries about our supply chain, but we urge customers to plan early for any changes you want to make and be flexible if a product is out of stock. Healthcare is likely to be an industry that gets busier during this issue, we are classed as essential workers and will be given priority to restore service.

Service Level Agreements – Although we will attempt to repair and maintain your medical equipment as quickly as we can, under these difficult circumstances we may experience high volumes of call outs, we consider this situation beyond our reasonable control but hope that we can still meet and exceed your expectations.

Business as usual – Wolverson X Ray Ltd is an equipment and service provider to the NHS and private healthcare consortia, whilst we appreciate that this is a serious situation, we will continue to function and serve you, the customer, to the best of our ability. In terms of contingency, we have relationships with “partner companies” that will assist with our business should we find ourselves with limited functionality. In addition:

• We are in regular contact with our key suppliers and expect them to have robust business continuity plans
• We keep a close eye on our stock levels to ensure that our service obligations to you can be met
• We require any employee that has visited a high-risk country to work from home as a precautionary measure for a period of 14 days
• None essential visitors to our office have been suspended
• Visits to Exhibitions have been suspended for the foreseeable future
• We are sharing best practice health tips with our employees

We are expecting the problems caused by Coronavirus to be medium term, as the Government plans for the virus to pass through the population slowly.

Andy Hodgetts
Managing Director