VAHHS: Hospital leaders make kits for children in emergency departments
VBM
In what has now become an annual tradition, health care leaders at the Vermont Association of Hospitals and Health Systems (VAHHS) Annual Meeting on September 21 and 22 set aside time to do a service project for the community. This year, the group partnered with the Vermont Partners for Quality in Health Care (VPQHC) to assemble activity kits for children in Vermont emergency departments, sometimes awaiting mental health beds. The kits are the latest hospital service project, which have in the past included supply kits for housing-insecure families supported by Capstone Community Action and welcome kits for refugee families coming to Vermont through Bennington County Open Arms.
“Our friends at VPQHC originally produced these kits—not as a solution to long wait times, but as a way of making a hard time easier for patients, families and staff and we are so grateful for their efforts,” said Michael Del Trecco, President and CEO of VAHHS. “VPQHC, like so many organizations and individuals, experienced devastating flooding in July and lost some of their inventory of these kits, so we thought this was a fitting service project this year. This partnership and others like it are essential in health care as we all work to meet the needs of our shared patients and clients as efficiently as we can.”