How Crush the Curve uses Jotform and BlueSnap to combat COVID-19

When it rains, it pours.

As coronavirus made its way around the world, people stayed inside, and many businesses closed.

For those essential businesses that remained open, testing employees for infection, securing medical supplies, and coordinating it all wasn’t exactly easy or cheap. Ever-changing and sometimes confusing health regulations didn’t help much, either.

Dr. Tommy Ahlquist, a real estate developer and former emergency room physician in Idaho, knew that this dilemma needed to be addressed quickly once state leaders issued stay-at-home orders toward the end of March.

“One of the things that has bothered me as an ER doctor is that we’re testing the sick,” Ahlquist said in an interview with the KTVB television station in early April. “I understand that, but we have people out there, such as service workers, doctors, paramedics, police, the folks who are working in food service, and delivery workers, who could be spreading the disease.”

By chance, a friend called and told him about a group of business leaders in Utah who launched an initiative to get more people tested for coronavirus infections. He hung up and immediately called a business partner in east Idaho.

“All at once, the spark hit me: If they’re doing it, we’re going to do this. There must be test kits out there, and there must be ways we can make a difference,” Ahlquist said in the KTVB interview.

Within a matter of weeks, Ahlquist and fellow business leaders created a nonprofit called Crush the Curve Idaho. The overarching goal is to keep business owners up to date on rules and guidelines during the pandemic, as well as reduce the costs and challenges of testing at scale.

“The hope was that by increasing testing capacity in the state, we could make informed decisions moving forward, open our companies back up, and keep Idaho’s economy open throughout the remainder of this pandemic,” said Camille Blaylock of Crush The Curve Idaho.

As people started reaching out to help, pledges for donations poured in, and employers throughout the state were eager to participate in coordinated coronavirus testing drives for their employees.

To get Crush the Curve Idaho off the ground, business leaders used Jotform to create HIPAA-friendly forms to collect personal and medical information from people when they arrived at designated coronavirus testing sites.

“Jotform was a dream to work with,” Blaylock said. “The user interface actually blew people’s minds. The fact that a medical test intake form could be that streamlined and such a clean process? It was just unheard of, and the HIPAA-friendly platform fit perfectly into Crush the Curve’s culture of safe and streamlined tech.”

With the help of Jotform’s BlueSnap integration, Crush the Curve Idaho also created a donation form to bolster and support ongoing initiatives, such as providing tests for those who can’t afford it and supporting Idaho’s overall response to the pandemic.

“It was a massive bonus to find out that our payment and donation solution, BlueSnap, was already fully integrated with Jotform, making the process super seamless,” Blaylock said.

According to Jotform’s partner marketing manager, Briana Strauss, “Together, Jotform and BlueSnap provide an effortless way to collect valuable information alongside payments. Getting started with your first payment form is incredibly easy. Simply create a custom payment form or use one of our templates, add BlueSnap, and start collecting payments or donations online right away. This helps reduce in-person contact and streamline processes with a secure platform.”

In the months since its launch, Crush the Curve Idaho has partnered with labs nationwide to achieve greater testing capacity for the state. In fact, Idaho is now able to process 116,000 active virus tests per week.

All told, Crush the Curve Idaho has worked with 170,000 Idahoans to prevent the spread of coronavirus. For instance, Crush the Curve Idaho has served many of Idaho’s nursing homes by providing the bulk of recurring testing needed to keep the elderly safe during the pandemic. And with data collected through Jotform, Crush the Curve Idaho is also helping with contact tracing to contain the spread among those who opt in and test positive for the virus.

As students return to school and businesses prepare to reopen, Crush the Curve Idaho is offering advice on how to reopen and keep up with testing. The organization has already teamed up with more than 600 companies to plan how to reopen safely, test their employees, and stay open in the fall.

Crush the Curve Idaho has also partnered with the University of Washington Virology Lab to provide COVID-19 antibody testing and has already administered more than 16,500 tests to people across the state.

Conclusion

Crush the Curve Idaho is an important provider of rapid response testing for businesses and organizations throughout the state that have identified cases of COVID-19 in their workplaces.

With the help of Jotform as a mobile data-collection tool and BlueSnap as a payment processor, Crush the Curve Idaho is making a significant contribution in the fight against coronavirus.

Although there’s still a long way to go before the COVID-19 pandemic is under control, Jotform’s free Coronavirus Responder Program will keep providing the HIPAA-friendly support that businesses, organizations, nonprofits, and governments need during this unprecedented time.

If you haven’t done so already, give Jotform — and our BlueSnap integration — a try today. See how we can help you make a difference and adjust to a new normal.