March 08, 2021
Kansas City, Kan. — The University of Kansas Health System admitted its first hospital patient with COVID-19 on March 8, 2020. Because the novel coronavirus pandemic had already been raging in other parts of the world and in U.S. cities like New York, we were as prepared as we could have been. Since that time, we’ve seen COVID-19 patients every day – admitting some, discharging some and losing others.
Today, the pandemic continues. As devastating as this is, we are better equipped to battle the illness in many ways. And every day we’ve shared with our community what we have learned about keeping people safe and well.
Though we are frustrated that the pandemic persists, we are also far more optimistic than we were 1 year ago. We see an end in sight. Yet we remain sharply focused on caring for our patients – no matter what their illness – caring for our physicians and staff and caring for our community, who also cares for us through their tremendous support.
We are extremely grateful to our community who generously supported us from day 1 and continues to do so with each passing day. This support happens in many ways, including:
- Abundant donations of food for our care teams as well as countless gestures of gratitude for our entire staff, including motivating messages, letters, cards, signs, posts and “likes” in social media.
- Collaboration with community leaders and healthcare providers across the region to share information, manage resources and essential supplies, minimize infection spread and safely care for patients.
- Devoted engagement in our daily morning media updates to learn the latest on COVID-19 and infection prevention and control measures – and then sharing the information with your family, friends, neighbors and co-workers.
- Generous donations of funds for services and supplies, including personal protective equipment (PPE), hand sanitizer, lab development and implementation of COVID-19 testing. We also continue to receive support for other healthcare services, frontline workers and patients in need.
- Gifts of time and skill including handmade cloth masks for patients and visitors and sewing zippers into scrubs to ease removal.
- Heartfelt messages of thanks and inspiration from government officials, professional athletes, entertainers and philanthropists.
- Selfless donations of blood and blood plasma from those who recovered from COVID-19 to help others fight.
While we know the end is in sight, we cannot relax our efforts in fighting coronavirus in our community. Your continued support will make a difference. To learn more about donating funds or for other information, please contact Fund Development at funddevelopment@kumc.edu.