Beebe Healthcare raising money for COVID-19 relief fund

DELAWARE – Beebe Healthcare says support from the community is making it possible for them to continue their fight against the COVID-19. “We expected to raise a considerable amount of money, but we did not expect to raise this amount this fast,” said Beebe Medical Foundation president Tom Protack.

With the help of the local community, Beebe Healthcare says they’ve been able to raise $685,000 for their COVID-19 relief fund as of Thursday. The fund was set up through the Beebe Medical Foundation. Protack says Beebe wanted to be ahead of the curve when the number COVID-19 cases began to rise. “As we saw that the numbers were increasing and we could see that this was happening nationwide, we knew that we already had an outpouring of the community saying ‘how can we help?’. We established the COVID relief fund immediately,” said Protack.

Protack says the response from the community has been overwhelming, and from every corner. “The surge of generosity has really been amazing from individuals, groups and organizations, and corporate supporters, and community supporters,” said Protack.

Beebe’s chief financial officer Paul Pernice says the fund is playing a key roll in being able to help pay for the resources needed to care for COVID-19 patients. He also says that the hospital has spent about $3 million on COVID-19 care alone. “Some of that is increased costs in PPE. Some of it is capital. So, additional equipment that we’ve purchased. Things like lab testing equipment, increasing our tele-health technology,” said Pernice.