News Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 6, 2020
Contact: Ted Froats, VISN 10 Public Affairs Officer
Ted.Froats@va.gov, Office: 937-267-3919

Dayton VAMC Announces Plans to Return to Pre-Covid Capacity

Staff have donated masks, food, and their own blood to Veterans in
need
The Dayton VA Medical Center (VAMC) announced today their plans to begin carefully and
thoughtfully returning to full patient capacity while still maintaining COVID-19 precautions to
ensure the odds of an outbreak at the hospital remain low.

While the Dayton VA has continued providing face-to-face medical care for Veterans who
required immediate care all along, we had previously moved most standard appointments
to tele-health when possible out of an abundance of caution for our nation’s most
vulnerable heroes.

Effective Monday, June 8th, we will begin filling our in-person primary and specialty care
schedules back up to 25% capacity, with the remainder continuing to be conducted via tele-
health. We are also re-opening for elective surgeries. We have already conducted medical
record reviews and are prioritizing face-to-face appointments for those Veterans who have
the most immediate medical need for them first.

We will set these appointment schedules one week at a time, so that we can continue to
monitor patient flow and protective equipment supplies – enabling us to either keep
expanding our capacity if possible or pull back as needed to maintain social distancing and
other safety measures for our Veterans and staff.

All patients and staff will continue to be required to wear a mask at all times on our campus.
Additionally, our COVID-19 visitor policy will remain in place, which prohibits all inpatient
visitors (other than end-of-life scenarios), and permits outpatients to bring only one person
with them to their appointment – provided that this individual assists with the outpatient’s
care, and must be 18 years of age or older.

All patients and staff will be screened and have their temperatures taken before entering
many of the buildings on our campus, including all medical buildings. Please be aware that
to enable this screening process, several building entrances are currently locked from the
outside – signs are in place to direct you to the appropriate door for screening. We have
also rearranged waiting room and cafeteria furniture to enable social distancing and are
spacing out appointment times to minimize the number of people who are waiting for their
appointment at any given time.
In addition to continuing to provide medical care to Veterans throughout the COVID-19
global pandemic and working on our plans to safely expand capacity again, the Dayton VA
has also taken additional steps to support our community through this difficult time. Dayton
VA staff created tens of thousands of masks, which were provided for free to staff,
Veterans, and even other VA Medical Centers throughout our region. We’ve also hosted
several drive-thru, no-contact Veteran food pantries to help more than 700 Veterans and
their family members in need. Additionally, Dayton VA staff donated more than 100 units of
their own blood at a recent Red Cross event on campus, which will be used to save the
lives of more than 300 patients who need this blood to survive.

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