Delivering Care, and Groceries

Stanford’s CROWN clinic (an acronym for care and respiratory observation of patients with novel coronavirus) sees hundreds of people who have tested positive for COVID-19 each week, many of whom are low income or don’t have adequate health insurance. Barman and other clinic practitioners were worried not only about their patients’ health but also about the heavy burden that a positive COVID-19 diagnosis would put on them and their families.

“A lot of our patients live paycheck to paycheck. When they have coronavirus, they can’t work,” says Barman. “Early on during the pandemic, we realized we needed to ask all of our patients how they were doing and how their families were doing, because COVID-19 impacts everyone.

“We’d ask patients how much food they had at home, and whether they were able to get groceries or go to a food bank,” Barman says. “Many weren’t able to, because their families were sick as well, or because they didn’t have enough money, or because they didn’t have access to the internet and delivery services.”

So Barman came up with a plan to bring meals and groceries to them. She set up a computer in an exam room that stayed signed in to her Instacart account. If she saw a patient who needed groceries, she would confirm the patient’s home address, head to the computer in the exam room, and order him or her supplies.

Some of Barman’s colleagues would even do the shopping themselves. When Mirella Nguyen, NP, a nurse practitioner, heard that one of her patients, a single mother, was running out of food at home, she took swift action. “Mirella immediately went to the grocery store,” Barman remembers. “When the patient came in the next day for her scheduled chest x-ray and physical exam, Mirella handed her a week’s worth of fresh items.”

Clinic staff also found other ways to lend a hand. During a routine checkup with a new patient, a mother of two who had recently been discharged from the hospital, Barman learned that she didn’t have enough money for Christmas presents. “When I asked how her family was doing, she told me that her kids were disappointed there wouldn’t be Christmas presents this year, but that they all were finally in good health and that was what was important. She had enough money to pay her landlord and buy food, but she had nothing left for gifts. I asked a few more questions about the kids: How old are they, what do they like … and I immediately rushed home and told my own children: We’re playing Santa.”

Barman and her family bought presents and mailed everything to her patient in time for the holidays.

After Christmas, Barman received a call from her patient, who told her just how much her generosity had meant during such a stressful time. “I said that I was glad to help, and that I knew she would have the chance to pay it forward and take care of someone else like this in the future.”

Barman’s prediction came true. Several months later, the patient’s brother showed up at the CROWN clinic after being diagnosed with COVID-19. When Barman asked who was caring for him and helping him with medical supplies and groceries, she was delighted by the answer. “He said it was his sister, my former patient,” Barman recalls. “She was back on her feet, taking care of her brother. She was passing it on.”

Feeding Residents on the Frontlines

In late March 2020, shortly after nationwide shelter-in-place orders took effect, internal medicine chief residents Mita Hoppenfeld, MD, Andrew Moore, MD, and Adrian Castillo, MD went online and set up a GoFundMe campaign called Residents Helping Residents to raise $5,000 for food gift cards to donate to residents in New York hospitals, which at the time was the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hoppenfeld started the project partly to assuage a feeling of survivor’s guilt. “You get trained in medicine to be a health care provider and to give as much help as you can,” she explains. “I can only imagine the sort of decisions that my colleagues in New York hospitals had to make. I felt very helpless, and I wanted to do something, and I thought, ‘One of the things that always brings me joy is food. I wish I could just make sure that they feed themselves because that’s the first thing that I stop doing when I’m on really busy rotations.’"