COVID test results to order at Northbrook Court
Business ingenuity will arise to meet any opportunity.
Take the new COVID-19 testing company, COVID Diagnostics. It's set up shop at Northbrook Court in the former Stir Crazy restaurant, on the mall's southeast side between Nieman Marcus and the AMC Theatres.
"We're operating the business from a hostess stand," said CEO Brad Zerman, who hired 15 people to start the company, which opened Feb. 8.
Lest the hostess-stand aspect deter one from being tested at COVID Diagnostics, consider the company is nurse-managed under the medical direction of Dr. Ingrid Liu, who's been practicing primary care family medicine for 20 years. She did her residency at West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park.
Zerman sought to provide a service that's safe, simple and quick.
COVID Diagnostics offers a saliva PCR test and a rapid antigen swab test. Clients must book appointments on the company website, www.covid19-diagnostics.com , from home or a device. Or, they can just pull up and park in one of the company's designated parking spaces.
Zerman has rented 25 parking spaces from the mall, each posted with a sign. Provided they've ordered one or more tests, uploaded their insurance information and brought a driver's license or state identification, customers can drive right up and send a text message upon arrival. Or, they can do it all from their parking space without an appointment.
A technician will come out to the vehicle with a contactless testing kit. At least five specialists work per shift, Zerman said, connected by iPads to the indoor hub with its computers and big wall monitors running an application they designed to manage the business.
The gentle swab test takes less than a minute for the customer to execute. The saliva test takes a few minutes, Zerman said.
If a customer wishes to wait for results of the rapid antigen test, they'll get those within about 15 minutes. If they prefer to leave, results will be securely provided from a portal within two hours. The saliva PCR test results are available between 24-72 hours, in an arrangement between COVID Diagnostics and GoPath Laboratories of Buffalo Grove.
Pricing and payment information is found on the COVID Diagnostics website. Insurance is not accepted for the rapid antigen test, but there are discounts for testing multiple people in a vehicle and receiving both tests, if desired.
"We've made it real easy," Zerman said.
He's hoping to also market this to hotels, schools and other places off-premise.
"We want to be able to service people here," he said. "We have a site that can serve 300 people a day. But we also know it's going to be important to maybe push out our staff (remotely)."
Zerman, who grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and lives near Ashland Avenue and Irving Park Road in Chicago, is not a medical practitioner. He is a businessman.
He's developed and sold a couple businesses - an ATM processing company he had for 25 years and a cannabis dispensary he had for three. Last year he applied to open other dispensaries in Illinois and outside of Detroit, in addition to a craft growing facility in Illinois.
"With COVID happening and seeing what was going on and seeing a need for more testing I decided I wanted to get back to work and do something interesting and not wait for all these licenses to be awarded," he said.
Zerman liked the Northbrook Court location because of its accessibility to transportation, the North Shore clientele and management's willingness to work with him.
"There's a bunch of buildings where I could have done it easily, they had a whole building and a parking lot," he said. "But landlords weren't really keen on having a temporary business."
How temporary is anyone's guess. Zerman believes COVID testing will be a viable business for all of 2021.
"The rollout of the vaccine has been super slow and there's just a need for people to be tested to get back to a normal life," he said.
"Between airplanes and whatever job you might have that requires it, maybe certain events, it could become a much bigger thing."