Medical assistants are the heart of health care and play a key role in medical and preventive screenings. They work alongside doctors to provide care to patients. Many medical assistants are cross-trained in medical and administrative duties. Every year, Medical Assistants Recognition Week is celebrated during the third full week in October. As a way to honor Medical Assistants and to help give back to the community, now might be a great time to plan a blood drive at your commercial or residential property. Blood donations save lives, and in the current pandemic situation, plasma collected from COVID survivors is being used as an experimental treatment for COVID patients. Check out our previous article on how to host a blood drive. As you’re planning your blood drive, we wanted to provide some brief information on different mobile providers to help you decide which one to use. Each blood donation group’s name links to the blood drive hosting page. 

The Blood Connection

The Blood Connection is a non-profit blood collection service organization. They have nine blood collection centers that service northern Georgia and North and South Carolina. 

BigRedBus

OneBlood provides the easily-recognizable Big Red Bus mobile collection centers. They service parts of North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. As opposed to some other organizations requirements, the bus can roll up nearly anywhere and have a blood drive. 

Red Cross

Known not only for blood drives, but for CPR training and humanitarian relief services, the Red Cross is one of the largest organizations of its type in the world. As a property manager, you’ll need to provide a location and volunteers, which is slightly different than some of the other organizations. 

The need for blood products grows every year. Unfortunately, 90% of the young, healthy potential donors never donate. When you give blood, you typically help at least four people. Where else can you sit for 30 minutes and help save four lives? Our suggestion to our readers? Donate now, donate often. Post on social media that you donated. The donor base needs to increase. Who knows, it may be you, your spouse, or a family member that needs a treatment from a blood product next. 

Not everyone can donate, and that’s understandable. If you fall into the category of those that can’t physically donate, that doesn’t mean you can’t help out. The MOBLZ staff helps with a few blood drives per year. Those unable to give assist those that are giving. Helping may be something as simple as serving pizza or sandwiches to those who have just donated, or it may mean helping with the set up and break down. 

Regardless of which group you choose to help with your blood drive, what is important is that your property is stepping up to help those in need of blood products. There’s also nothing wrong with using the blood drive to garner some good press for your property. Make sure you take pictures of the blood drive in process and post to your social media channels. Take a few minutes and send us pictures of your drives and let us know what worked and what didn’t.