Physician-in-Chief's Message
April 14, 2020
Dear Colleagues,
Today, at UNC, we had a total of 15 patients admitted with COVID. We had our first pediatric patient admitted last night. Thank you to the healthcare teams for facilitating this admission. 
UNC COVID Updates
Inpatient Care
  • UNC Children’s currently has the first pediatric inpatient admitted who is positive for COVID. The child has an underlying chronic disease but is doing very well thus far.
  • Overall, this admission went well. Symptoms were identified before the child and family came into the ED. They were masked and all providers who interacted with the family were in full PPE. The diagnosis was made quickly and the patient has been cared for by the COVID team. 
  • The experience with the process of this admission and care has also helped us identify certain policies that need to be re-emphasized. We need to strongly advocate for parental presence even for children who are being tested for COVID. Parents or visitors who are symptomatic are not allowed in the hospital. Furthermore, parents or visitors must wear a mask.
Ambulatory Care
  • Thank you to Sherry Ross, Ed Spence, Ceila Loughlin, Kevin Brady, Will Kanipe, Kellei Agostinelli, and Luis Feliciano for their administrative leadership of the multispecialty clinics. We also have terrific medical directors and administrative leaders in the more focused Children’s clinics across multiple specialties. Also thank you to Martha Perry and Benjamin Butler who have led much of the virtual care innovation.
UNC Children's Wellness Initiative
If you have not responded to the Buddy Survey please do so as soon as possible so we can get folks paired up. I want to stress this buddy system is for EVERYONE in the department - staff, residents, fellow, faculty - so please sign up so we can help one another through these difficult times.
We hit a big milestone today; in the multi-specialty clinics almost half-of the virtual visits were scheduled as video visits! Clinic leadership continues to work on improving the efficiency of these video visits. We are grateful for your patience.

Thank you for all that you do,
919-417-3130 (cell)