Swab!: Leadership in the Race to Provide Covid Testing to America

Behind the scenes of the rush to create mass Covid testing programs overnight

SWAB is the story of how BioReference Laboratories--working with no roadmap, no federal guidance or support, and no prior pandemic experience--established processes to test every imaginable segment of the American public. BioReference rose to national prominence as the ＂first＂ on many COVID testing frontiers: New York’ s first drive-through testing site; the exclusive provider for the NBA ＂Bubble＂; the exclusive testing provider for the NFL; the first to perform testing for New York City public schools; testing for the first cruise line (Royal Caribbean) to sail when the CDC order was lifted; the first to test thousands of fans for an NFL playoff game; and the first to develop large scale testing programs for testing thousands of people within one hour of special events.

SWAB is the story of how Dr. Jon Cohen and his thousands of employees worked around the clock to create bespoke COVID mass testing programs from scratch literally overnight, addressing a series of seemingly insurmountable obstacles in the process. It is a case study of crisis leadership, and a visceral, relatable read for anyone who felt a cotton swab almost reach their brain while taking a Covid-19 test.

Dr. Jon R. Cohen was CEO and Executive Chairman of Bioreference Laboratories when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Dr. Cohen led Bioreference to national prominence to become one of the country’s largest providers of COVID-19 testing and the nation’s leader in surveillance testing.

Dr. Cohen has more than 30 years of healthcare experience as a seasoned strategic leader and healthcare policy expert with a successful track record of growing new healthcare business ventures. He has previously been named as one the nation’s top 50 most powerful physician executives by Modern Healthcare and is recognized for his popular TEDMED talk, ＂Why Don’t Patients Act Like Consumers?＂

Dr. Cohen began his career as a vascular surgeon and served as Chief Medical Officer at Northwell Health, the largest healthcare system in New York State, and as Chief Policy Advisor to former New York Governor David A. Paterson. He completed his residency in general surgery at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center and a fellowship in vascular surgery at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Cohen currently serves as CEO of Talkspace, one of the nation’s leading providers of telehealth mental health services. He lives in Great Neck, New York with his wife, Karen Kostroff, M.D., chief of breast surgery for the Northwell Health System.