COVID-19

Dear Community Partners, All the indicators of community spread of COVID-19 are on the rise: inpatient admissions, patients in the Enhanced Primary Care, drive up COVID-19 testing, and calls this week to the “Call Before You Go” hotline. The Enhanced Primary Care program provides supportive outpatient services to help keep people out of the hospital.…

Dear Community Partners, All the indicators of community spread of COVID-19 are on the rise: inpatient admissions, patients in the Enhanced Primary Care, drive up COVID-19 testing, and calls this week to the “Call Before You Go” hotline. The Enhanced Primary Care program provides supportive outpatient services to help keep people out of the hospital.…

Dear Community Partners, Like other hospitals across the region, we have a growing concern about how the nursing shortage impacts our ability to care for our communities in the middle of a pandemic. As a regional hospital that provides a layer of support to smaller critical access hospitals, we take care of patients transferred to…

Dear Community Partners, Beginning with today’s COVID-19 Scorecard, we will provide the vaccination status of hospitalized patients. We will also be providing the number of COVID-19 patient discharges and deaths from the previous day and cumulative numbers of hospitalized and discharged patients and deaths. We are adding context to the COVID-19 positive testing rate related…

Dear Community Partners, We are at a crossroads in the COVID-19 pandemic that will define our lives and our community’s future. While there is mounting frustration among us – those who believe in or who dispel the value of the vaccines – we individually must listen to our conscience as a guide. As you consider…

Dear Community Partners, Just three hours and 28 minutes away from Topeka, a COVID-19 nightmare is playing out. Hospitals in southwest Missouri are overwhelmed with patients as the delta variant surges. Deaths are mounting. The two Springfield hospitals reported 27 COVID deaths last weekend alone. As of the past Monday, those hospitals combined had had…

Dear Community Partners, Get vaccinated. Wear a facemask – especially in public indoor settings. Social distance. Wash your hands. It’s déjà vu. These are all precautions we have heard and hopefully practiced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, with the highly transmissible and contagious delta variant in our region, these precautions are advised again, even for…

Dear Community Partners, The delta variant is changing the COVID-19 pandemic playing field, adding a layer of complexity to understanding how the virus spreads and infects individuals. Additionally, vaccination status has become a topic of discussion with this highly transmissible variant. What is known is that those individuals who are unvaccinated have a higher risk…

Dear Community Partners, The year 2020 was a challenging one with the COVID-19 pandemic impacting nearly every facet of our lives. We pined for 2021 to get everything back to “normal.” Now the delta variant of the virus is spreading through our region and we are faced with the reality that the pandemic isn’t gone.…

Dear Community Partners, As we see increases in COVID-19 infections fueled by the delta variant spreading across Kansas and now in our backyard, we are making preparations to ensure our organization is ready and our team members are supported. As of today, we have 22 inpatients with COVID-19. The acuity and complexity of patients we…