The COVID-19 pandemic has presented challenges to everyone in our communities, especially our most vulnerable community members, our children. Children’s Wisconsin used its communication channels, blog and social media channels to connect with patients and families on available community resources, the impact of COVID-19 and MIS-C on kids and families, as well as provide guidance to parents and caregivers as they faced complex decisions regarding summer camps, sports, back-to-school and more. Children's also quickly scaled up their capacity to use technology both in their facilities and in patients’ homes to help families safely and conveniently access the virtual care they needed.
Children’s is very grateful to its volunteers, donors and corporate partners who helped make sure that all patients and clients and their families who visit Children's are able to be provided a cloth face mask. Once they were able to begin safely resuming inpatient procedures and surgeries, Children’s Wisconsin began instituting testing all patients for COVID-19 and making sure adequate PPE was available to support their procedure. Some of our Fox Valley area patients had planned surgeries at our Milwaukee campus. Instead of having them drive down to Milwaukee, thier Fox Valley staff facilitated pre-procedure COVID-19 tests for families, saving them hours of drive time for the brief test and allowed parents and caregivers to miss less work time. Children’s providers across the system are proud to continue providing the best and safest care for kids in Wisconsin.