COVID-19

Dear Community Partners, Urgent care can feel more urgent in a pandemic. The COVID-19 virus – and especially its delta variant – is tricky, with disease symptoms that can vary widely. Plus, this is a novel virus that we are still learning about, but much remains unknown. Are these symptoms a cold or COVID? Is…

Dear Community Partners, Urgent care can feel more urgent in a pandemic. The COVID-19 virus – and especially its delta variant – is tricky, with disease symptoms that can vary widely. Plus, this is a novel virus that we are still learning about, but much remains unknown. Are these symptoms a cold or COVID? Is…

Dear Community Partners, Changing our Emergency Department to diversion status – which means ambulances carrying patients are diverted to another hospital – is a difficult decision to make. However, it is one that has been made more often the past year. During diversions, our front door to the ED remains open and we continue to…

Dear Community Partners, There are many hands working together to help keep our community healthy in the COVID-19 pandemic. One important team is at our Infusion Center in Topeka where we provide monoclonal antibody treatment to COVID-19 outpatients. This is a treatment given to patients who are at high risk for developing severe symptoms from…

Dear Community Partners, We are facing a difficult and dire situation in the COVID-19 pandemic. It is important that we have a full understanding of what this means to us and the health care in our communities. Our hospital is full. At the start of today, all of our hospital’s adult inpatient rooms were filled…

Dear Community Partners, Here are today’s updates: COVID-19 Scorecard (English and Spanish) COVID-19 Vaccines COVID-19 Scorecard Here’s a look at today’s COVID-19 scorecard: We have 54 inpatients who are COVID-19 positive. The percentage of hospital patients who are unvaccinated is 83%. Vaccinated is defined as fully vaccinated individuals for greater than 14 days since the…

Dear Community Partners, Today marks a wonderful milestone for Stormont Vail Health and for 41 of our nurses. We are celebrating the completion of a nurse residency program by these new graduate nurses. This is a program that was developed through the work of an interdisciplinary team to help new nurses receive a thorough orientation…

Dear Community Partners, Here are today’s updates: COVID-19 Scorecard COVID-19 Vaccines COVID-19 Scorecard Here’s a look at today’s COVID-19 scorecard: We have 55 inpatients who are COVID-19 positive. The percentage of hospital patients who are unvaccinated is 85%. Vaccinated is defined as fully vaccinated individuals for greater than 14 days since the last immunization. From…

Dear Community Partners, Demand for adult inpatient beds continues to outpace supply. Like most healthcare organizations in Kansas we are facing staffing challenges, which means we are unable to take all of the patients needing a transfer for hospital care. Because the COVID-19 surge is widespread across the Midwest, the situation is further exacerbated. From…

Dear Community Partners, The resistance of some to get a COVID-19 vaccine may at times be less about resistance and more about barriers. I recently learned of a situation in which a person “resisting” the vaccine was actually willing to get it but resisted because of language barriers she faced. The person believed she didn’t…