Visions Federal Credit Union has provided UHS Hospitals with a $15,000 grant that will allow them to expand their COVID-19 testing capacity.
“We recognize the important role testing, especially rapid testing, can play in keeping a workforce and community healthy. We see this as an investment in our community’s health and are proud to partner with UHS to help offset some of the costs associated with this critical service,” said Tim Strong, Community Development Manager at Visions FCU.
The UHS Laboratory has done over 34,000 in-house tests in the past eight months and another 21,000 tests have recently been collected and sent to external reference labs. In the beginning, these tests took hours to days to get results. The recent development of a rapid testing instrument has increased turnaround time on these tests, often within an hour. These new instruments allow more people to be tested at a faster rate, helping to keep the community spread low.
Overall, COVID-19 testing is an expense that UHS did not originally budget for 2020. UHS is investing in enhanced COVID-19 testing to protect the community thanks to Visions.
"Stopping the spread of COVID-19 is a community effort. UHS is very grateful to Visions Federal Credit Union for its support of our rapid testing instruments. A donation to UHS is a donation to the community," said Cory Jacobs, Executive Director of the UHS Foundation.
Visions and UHS