Sarah Bush Lincoln was awarded Saving Sight’s 2015 Excellence in Eye Donation Award on Friday, March 25, recognizing the partner hospital for achievements in providing the gift of sight to those needing a transplant last year.
In 2015, staff members at Sarah Bush Lincoln helped to facilitate 24 eye donation cases, which resulted in 38 individuals receiving restored sight through a cornea transplant. Overall, the hospital achieved a 60 percent consent rate for eye donation.
The Excellence in Eye Donation Award was created in 2014 to recognize hospitals that demonstrate an outstanding commitment to eye donation. Hospitals in Saving Sight’s service area of Missouri, Kansas and Illinois that achieved an eye donation consent rate exceeding 45 percent with at least 10 donors during the 2015 calendar year will receive the award. Fewer than 15 percent of Saving Sight’s partner hospitals will be recognized with a 2015 Excellence in Eye Donation Award. This year marks the second time Sarah Bush Lincoln received the honor.
“We applaud Sarah Bush Lincoln for empowering others to give the gift of sight and for striving to create a culture that supports donation,” Tony Bavuso, CEO of Saving Sight, said. “Thanks to the generosity of eye donors and their families, and the staff at Sarah Bush Lincoln, more people than ever were able to receive a sight-saving cornea transplant last year.”
Each year around 48,000 individuals in the United States require a cornea transplant to restore vision that has been lost due to disease, disorder or injury. With the help of hospital partners like Sarah Bush Lincoln, Saving Sight provided corneas for more than 3,000 of those transplant surgeries in 2015. For more information on becoming an eye, organ and tissue donor please visit donatelife.net.
About Saving Sight
Saving Sight is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with a mission to change lives by saving sight. Founded in Columbia, Mo. in 1960, the organization introduced eye donation and the gift of sight to Missouri. Today, Saving Sight operates community healthy vision programs that serve more than 100,000 people worldwide each year with offices located in Missouri, Kansas, and central Illinois. For more information, please visit saving-sight.org.
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Pictured left to right receiving the award are: Saving Sight Partner Relations Coordinator Richard Hamilton; Clinic Director Greg Taylor; Emergency Department Manager Melissa Linton, RN; Emergency Department Director Nancy Wurtsbaugh, RN; CCU Director Eli Heicher, RN; SBL Vice President of Patient Continuum and Chief Nursing Officer Lisa Woodward; and Surgical Services Director Kandy Donahue.