- Good afternoon.
My name is David Baiada,
the CEO here at BAYADA Home Health Care.
Today is Friday, October 2nd.
And this is your weekly COVID-19 CEO update.
I'd like to start by sharing some experience
and some great news about the incredible generosity
over the past six months during this pandemic,
where we've leveraged our nonprofit status
to quickly organize the ability
to solicit philanthropic contributions
into a fund that we have directed towards employee relief.
And it really all started when we started to see the stress
that our employees, you all, were facing
in your personal lives and in your professional life
because of the pandemic.
Whether it was daycare shutting down,
or loss of hours due to COVID exposure
or other elements of stress
and financial stress in particular.
We saw an opportunity and a responsibility
to figure out how can we raise money
through philanthropic generosity and contributions
and then redirect it in the form of small grants
to our employees in need.
And so we created the COVID-19 Employee Response Fund
and have had incredible, incredible response.
We, in the past four months helped 675 BAYADA employees
with grants totaling over $275,000.
And these are some just a small example of some
of the stories and you can see them on the screen,
where people have lost daycare and needed extra funding
for childcare so that they could still take care
of their clients during the day.
People that had been exposed to COVID,
whether it's in their personal life
or during their work life.
Or a spouse, you can see tested positive
and created an exposure situation leading
to CNA (indistinct) not being able to work
and needing financial assistance.
These are really, really
difficult situations
and our ability just to even help
with small grants, a couple $100 here, $50 there
have made massive impact on our employees.
And it's because of all of your generosity
that this has been possible.
And so I wanna revisit our call to action,
where you can make contributions
to this incredible fund, but also you can make requests.
And so for those of you that are watching
that are interested in supporting, you can contribute $5,
or $7, or $2 or $500 if you're so moved.
But also, if you're finding yourself in a position
of financial stress and you need help, please ask.
We are working really hard to raise money to be able
to be giving these grants to help you navigate
these obstacles that are COVID-induced in particular.
So I think this is an incredible story
and I'm really, really eager to help more people.
Next, I'd like to hand it over to Nora,
to share a little bit of a window
into our Heroes of the Year
that we just celebrated last week
with the culmination
of our annual award program, the Heroes Program.
Nora.
- Thank you, David.
And again, as we send you off into the weekend,
we always wanna express our heartfelt gratitude
for all the work that each and every one of you have done
during this pandemic.
A special shout out, as David said,
to our heroes of the year.
This is a longstanding tradition in our organization
and the pandemic may have impacted
exactly how we celebrate it.
But these four women
are just examples
of what goes on across our organization.
And we wanna shout out to them.
So Stacy Fortin, our hab tech,
Lisa Wedman, our home health physical therapist,
Michele Bryson-Ghent, who's in our pediatric practice
as an LPN and Jennifer Bradley, a registered nurse
in the hospice program.
So these four, certainly are heroes of the year.
We wanna congratulate them and thank them
for going above and beyond in living
The BAYADA Way and achieving that mission.
And so, but we know
that this goes on day in and day out behind those doors
and all of our homes
and wanna thank each and every one of you
for all you do on behalf of the clients that we serve.
- Thanks, Nora.
And I'll just underscore in closing
that admiration and gratitude,
not just for Stacy, Lisa, Michele, and Jennifer,
but for all of the clinicians out there that they represent
with this recognition.
The Heroes Program starts at the local level,
where a hero is selected
in each of these four categories every quarter
in every office, rising to the division, and region
and practice level, ultimately to our annual award
at our awards events each year.
And really these four incredible heroes are just the faces
of all the incredible work that's happening every day
in every home.
And so thanks to each and every one of you.
Congratulations to these four and we will see you next week.