Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital and Carilion New River Valley win national awards for environmental sustainability!

Sustainability is at the heart of our environmental stewardship – and we’re proud to share that our sustainability strategies have won us a national award. Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital and Carilion New River Valley received the Partner for Change Award from Practice Greenhealth, the nation’s leading organization dedicated to environmental sustainability in health care.

When the pandemic created a unique set of challenges for our staff working in Home Health and Hospice, Paul King, Police Captain for our Western Division jumped right in to help our mobile workforce serving the NRV and Tazewell.

Carilion employees across the organization have worked tirelessly and heroically in recent months--which makes their enthusiastic support of this week's annual Mother's Day Plant Sale even more gratifying. Because of a welcome surge of pre-orders, we oversold our allotted 400 plants and had to put in a rush order for additional plants...and sold all but two of them.

With great pleasure, I'd like to congratulate our orthopaedic joint council team for receiving the Advanced Certification during the most recent Joint Commission visit. Since 2007, this team has received the Gold Seal of Approval for disease specific care for hip and knee joint replacements. Over the last year, we have worked diligently to ensure we met the advanced level requirements and are honored to be recognized for this outstanding achievement!

I have always been grateful to be a part of the Carilion Direct Family but today that was magnified!  I had a report to put together and during such a dynamic time in our organization, other tasks seemed to point my attention elsewhere.  This report needed to be completed today and a few folks within our Orthopaedic Scheduling group were more than willing to step up and ensure everything was in place before I pulled the necessary data.  I just wanted to take a moment to shout out Rochelle Long, Latoya Mattox, James Kuttesch, Lydia Tung, Latisha Morris, Danielle Barrett and Rh

In response to the visitation restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, CRMH implemented patient communication liaisons. These liaisons are equipped with mini iPads and mobile video-chat apps such as Face-Time.  Patients can schedule a time with the liaisons to video chat with their family at home. This process has worked well for family members who have a video/capable device.

Kudos to Life-Guard Flight Paramedic Donnie McBrayer who answered the call when Carilion co-workers were in need for re-fit-testing due to the shortage of N95 1870. In his previous career, he had fit-tested over 1,500 people and recently, on his own, he attended the Virginia Department of Health fit-testing training specifically to help EMS agencies in our region. Over the past several days, Donnie fit-tested 55 Carilion employees who needed to be re-fit tested. Thank you, Donnie!

During this difficult and scary time, it's nice when we can have each other's back, especially when dealing with difficult patients. Here at St. Alban's, Dr. Milam always checks in with the nurses, asks how they are and if he can help with any particular patients. He will talk to a patient about being respectful to staff and reminds them that nurses are here to help patients. As a member of the staff, I personally appreciate his effort to "put out fires" with the difficult patients, and to always support his staff. Thank you Dr.

Thank you Dr Schumaeker for being a team player!

Sorin Scarlatescu

Commonwealth Linen Services and Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital Engineering both earned awards from the Virginia Water Environment Association (VWEA). This is the first year that a Carilion Clinic entity has earned an award from VWEA. The VWEA is an organization dedicated to education companies, people, and policy makers on the importance of water quality. They promote and advance the water quality professions and promote public health by preserving and enhancing the global water environment.