If you have not experienced being in the presence of someone severely ill with COVID-19, you may not fully understand the seriousness of the pandemic we are living through.

It’s about more than masks and social distancing. We have an opportunity to be part of the only solution we have right now; ensuring our actions benefit not only ourselves but our co-workers, their families and friends. 

Many of us have heard stories about patients putting off much-needed care due to fear of possibly contracting COVID-19 during their appointment. We are currently running a social media and digital campaign to educate our communities about the steps we are taking to keep them safe—and to keep you safe.

More than two months into the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re fortunate that we have not seen a large influx of COVID-19-positive patients filling up our hospital beds.

But we still need to be prepared now and into the future—we’ve been working on a surge plan, should we need it.

SafeWatch is the cornerstone of our patient safety program—when you report something in SafeWatch, you are helping keep our patients safe. You can use SafeWatch to report events (where an issue reached a patient) as well as great catches (where an issue was caught before it reached a patient). 

Each month, there are about 1,700 reports made through SafeWatch. Over a third of these are great catches.

Our Great Catch Awards recognize employees who identify and report potential errors or process issues before they can harm patients. Reporting these "great catches" can help us improve our systems and processes across Carilion to keep patients safe.

We recently gave two Great Catch awards.

Guy Katz, M.D., second-year resident in General Surgery, noticed that equipment at a patient’s bedside was not working appropriately. After he reported the issue, we made process changes and purchased a new type of equipment.

Patient transportation has come a long way since the horse-drawn ambulances of the early 1900s. Through the years, technology has improved patient transportation—whether on the ground or in the air.

Life-Guard 10 was purchased in 1982 to speed response times to communities in rural western Virginia; it was the first air medical service in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The helicopter held one pilot and one paramedic and could transport one patient.

Cancer care in our region is on the brink of its next evolution.

Our President and CEO Nancy Howell Agee and her husband, the Honorable G. Steven Agee, have donated $1 million as a seed gift to jump-start plans for a world-class Carilion Clinic Cancer Center. The new center will be built on the corner of Franklin Road and Reserve Avenue, on the VTC Health Sciences and Technology Campus.

Today we announced that we have leased 150,000 square feet of space at Tanglewood Mall in Roanoke County. The space will become home to outpatient practices of Carilion Children’s and may house other clinical services in the future as well.

Teamwork is the key for our neurologists and neurosurgeons in treating our epilepsy patients.

A comprehensive team that includes Dr. Mark Witcher and Dr. Chinekwu Anyanwu uses surgical and non-surgical treatments and techniques with patients to control seizures—including deep brain stimulation (DBS).

We are the first location in Virginia to use DBS as a treatment for epilepsy and one of only a few dozen in the country.