Each Christmas season, community businesses and individuals add their names to the Community Christmas Card by making a contribution in any amount toward the purchase of a specific piece of equipment on the medical staff’s wish list.

A colorful full page greeting is published in the Star Beacon Newspaper on Christmas Eve. Instead of sending local Christmas cards, contributors to the fund purchase sophisticated life-saving equipment for the Intensive Coronary Care Unit and send holiday wishes to local friends and neighbors through the Community Christmas Card.

Since its inception in 1970, the annual Community Christmas Card Fund has raised more than $218,000 to help purchase life-saving equipment for the Intensive Coronary Care Unit.

2008 contributions will help to purchase an updated Telemetry System, a remote, wireless monitoring of a patient’s heart rhythms and heart rates. Due to the conversion to digital signaling scheduled to occur in early 2009 and resulting changes in frequency, the telemetry system currently in place at UH Geneva Medical Center will no longer function. The new telemetry unit to be purchased with community contributions will be a state-of-the-art system designed to provide safe and continuous cardiac monitoring for patients and to deliver life critical data for evaluation by the medical staff.

This year’s donations will also be earmarked to purchase a Noninvasive Hemoglobin Monitor for the Intensive Coronary Care Unit. According to Dr. Amitabh Goel, this state of the art device will allow physicians to accurately measure and continuously monitor hemoglobin levels, eliminating the need for repeated blood draws. The Hemoglobin Monitor will allow physicians to promptly identify occult bleeding in critically ill patients and to allow rapid and accurate clinical decisions.

For more information or to add your name to the Community Christmas Card, please make your contribution by December 17 at any Geneva bank or contact any of the committee members listed below:

• Cathy Brashear 440-466-4911
• Tracy Clutter 440-466-0546
• Janey Jones 440-466-6669
• Jen Marrison 440-275-1554
• Judy Pearson 440-466-4033
• Jan Perala 440-466-2713
• Kay Raymond 440-466-7089
• Judy Robson 440-466-0324
• Marianne Sezon Dana 440-275-1134