DCH Coronavirus Update 8-14-20

Champions for Your Health

We are so very grateful for each of our employees and for the excellent care they provide every day for our patients and community. We see them as champions for the cause of excellent care in our community and want to share their good works with those we serve. With that in mind, we are retiring our tag line “Caring. For life.” and introducing “Champions for Your Health.” The new campaign’s promotional materials will feature DCH team members.

Included here is one of the new print ads. Watch for our new TV and radio commercials, print ads and billboards in the coming weeks and months.

If you personally know one of our health care champions, please take a moment to thank them for all the hard work, time and care they have contributed to helping to heal our community and make it a better place to call home.

Volunteering Is a Family Affair for the Simons

The year with the asterisk beside it – that’s how 2020 will go down in the history books, some have said, due to the impact of COVID-19. But add another asterisk for the pandemic’s positive side. 

One example is the Simon family. For almost a year, Rebecca Simon has been a DCH volunteer learning about DCH and health care operations. She is a student in the Manderson Graduate School of Business at The University of Alabama. Read more of their story here.

Testing and Confirmed Cases

To protect patient privacy, DCH has established a minimum threshold of five for reporting numbers of inpatients with laboratory-confirmed cases of COVID-19.

DCH internal counts as of 2:20 p.m. on 8/14/20:

• 75 inpatients are being treated for COVID-19.
• 23 inpatients who are positive for COVID-19 are being treated in the ICU.
• 6 who are positive for COVID-19 are on ventilators.
• 2,592 (cumulative) unique positives for COVID-19 tests including results from the ED, triage tent and inpatient. These individuals are not necessarily in the hospital.
• 16,886 (cumulative) unique negatives for COVID-19 at DCH sites.
• 3,361 (cumulative) positive COVID-19 at DCH sites. These individuals are not necessarily in the hospital.
• 22,687 (cumulative) negative tests at DCH sites.
• 695 inpatients (cumulative) who were positive for COVID-19 have been discharged.
• 138 inpatients (cumulative) who were positive for COVID-19 have died at DCH. This is not an indication of the cause of death, only that the individuals were positive for COVID-19 at the time of death.
• 80 Tuscaloosa County residents (cumulative) who were positive for COVID-19 have died (per the Alabama Department of Public Health).