Baptist Health is 3rd hospital to partner with YMCA for childcare in coronavirus crisis
Baptist Health will become the third hospital to partner with YMCA of Central Kentucky to offer childcare services to the hospital’s employees while schools are closed in the coronavirus outbreak.
Baptist Health will join the University of Kentucky Chandler Medical Center and CHI Saint Joseph Health in the arrangement with the YMCA.
The C.M. Gatton Beaumont, Whitaker Family and North Lexington Family YMCA locations in Lexington were closed to members to provide daytime childcare for UK and St. Joseph’s employees as long as the schools are closed, according to Paula Anderson, the YMCA chief executive officer. The High Street location will start providing the same for Baptist Health employees Wednesday, Anderson said.
After phone calls from St. Joseph’s and UK seeking help, Anderson said she realized, “This is something that we can do for the community.”
The children must be enrolled in kindergarten or higher grades, Anderson said. She said the centers aren’t equipped to take care of children younger than kindergarteners.
The YMCA wanted to make sure hospital employees could go to work without concerns about where to take their children while schools are closed, Anderson said. While other groups of people could benefit from the services, the YMCA’s first focus is the hospitals to ensure that medical care providers are available to help during the coronavirus outbreak, she added.
“If you think about hospitals as kind of ground zero for care, they’re where they have to have those people in the ICU unit, they have to have those people on the floor, in the emergency rooms,” Anderson said.
Anderson said the YMCA is evaluating the amount of space they have and considering whether or not to expand. The organization can currently take care of 250 to 300 kids, she said.
In order to enroll their children, hospital employees have to get information from their employers and register online, Anderson said.
The YMCA has a per-day charge for childcare services that hospital employees have to pay, but Anderson said hospitals may subsidize some of those costs. UK Hospital and Saint Joseph both said they will help. Baptist Health has not yet responded whether or not it will.
“Given that the schools have closed for the next two weeks, we wanted to come up with an option to help them, because you know we want to make sure we have caregivers,” John Petrov, vice president of human resources at Saint Joseph said. “We want to make sure that we’re fully staffed and we’re able to meet the needs of our patients.”
Ruth Ann Childers, a spokesperson for Baptist Health, echoed that healthcare workers are vital in their jobs.
“Healthcare workers are in a very important position now, as they need to come to work and take of others who are sick, just like we do every day,” she said.
Kim Wilson, UK vice president for human resources, said she was grateful that the YMCA stepped up.
“They have been great,” Wilson said. “They have been so willing to work with us. They understood the need. They have been willing to pivot, just like others in this situation, to meet needs.”
The program will run for as long as schools are closed, Anderson said.
“It’s a three-week window right now, boy I’d love for that to stay three weeks, but I don’t know,” Anderson said. “There’s a lot of CDC information coming out that suggests that it could be longer.”
This story was originally published March 16, 2020 at 10:32 AM.