2628 Wilhite Court, Suite 201
Lexington, KY 40503
PH: (859) 278-0569 FAX: (859) 277-3919
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James Borders, MD
LMS President 2021
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Faith vs Fear
James Borders, MD
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As LMS president this year, I have thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to have a forum in these newsletters to express my ideas. As we enter the holiday season, I want to take some personal liberty to challenge beliefs of some in the faith community (of which I am a part) that I believe have factored into some having a reflex opposition to many elements of public health policy dealing with the pandemic.
Adhering to the original concepts of the United States being a “Christian nation” that required bloody conflict to establish, those equating American values with Christian ones may understand that in order to protect and preserve the Christian faith, a fervent Christian must be a fervent patriot, proudly touting American individualism and self-determination. Some of the reluctance to submit to any mandates regarding the pandemic may be the fear that to do so may set a precedent - that to forfeit any freedom may ultimately risk forfeiting religious freedom. This perspective is especially prevalent in some conservative Protestant Christian denominations, some of whom were vocal deniers of the reality of a pandemic, opposed the masking and social distancing advised by public health experts, and from whom was launched a “faith vs fear” campaign opposing COVID vaccination. One prominent San Antonio minister recovering from a bout of COVID-19 himself was quoted as saying, “Jesus is my vaccine” and a Tennessee pastor warned his congregation “not to show up with masks”.
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For More Information about the Physician Wellness Program CLICK HERE
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LMS Year End Review
By Christopher Hickey, EVP/CEO
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When we are in the last month of the year it is natural to think how fast this past year went. The year started hopeful with our healthcare providers and our most medically vulnerable members of our society getting the Covid-19 vaccine. Momentum started picking up as more and more of us got vaccinated and the pandemic metrics were all trending positive till the end of June, then the delta variant took full effect. Just as we started thinking about transitioning to in-person membership events again we had to stop and remain virtual. We continued to focus on passing on urgent pandemic related information and assisted our health department on getting healthcare providers, whether they were members or not, registered to get vaccinated. Dr. James Borders, our LMS president, advocated, in many television interviews, to get vaccinated and take measures to protect yourself and each other from COVID-19. Internally, with most of our LMS employees working remotely, we took the opportunity to get our three-decade old elevator replaced and modernize to a cutting-edge call center communication system that is much more resilient than our previous system. Through all of this we kept our strategic plan in mind to advance what we could in the conditions that we had to operate.
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Donate Blood Today
By Dennis Williams, MD, Medical Director, Kentucky Blood Center
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As anyone reading this knows, the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly depleted the national blood supply. Collections dwindled early in the pandemic as donor turn out plummeted. Fortunately, this was balanced by a decrease in blood utilization partly the result of hospitals canceling elective procedures to accommodate the influx of COVID-19 patients.
More recently, as hospitals have recovered, blood utilization has rapidly recovered to pre-pandemic levels, and in some cases even greater. Blood collections, on the other hand, have not completely recovered.
Kentucky Blood Center, which supplies lifesaving blood products to 70+ Kentucky hospitals, including all Lexington-area hospitals, has seen collections drop in 2021 more than 9 percent from 2019, the last pre-pandemic year. A more startling statistic is a 35 percent drop in mobile blood collections. Prior to the pandemic, mobile blood drive provided the majority of the blood products collected by KBC. These drives were happening at high schools, colleges, businesses and community locations throughout the Commonwealth and simply haven’t returned to normal quantity or volume.
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