Last Day to Buy a 2 Cars 2 Winners Raffle Ticket!
MONROE, La. (KNOE) - The deadline is tonight at midnight to buy a ticket in the St. Francis Foundation’s 2 Cars 2 Winners Raffle!
Proceeds from the raffle go toward Women’s, Children’s, and Critical Care Services at St. Francis Medical Center. Specifically, this year they want to use the money toward a big remodel of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), which hasn’t seen a big redesign in about 40 years.
“Technology has changed and the way you’re caring for a baby has required more equipment and different setups for things, so we wanted to redesign it to be functional for our staff and for the families coming here,” explains St. Francis Foundation President Aimee Kane. “And we also know that when you’re leaving the hospital to care for your baby it’s a scary thought and you’re not sure how to care for that premature baby, so this is giving us the chance to have some stepdown rooms in our Level II side where parents can stay with the babies and be educated before they go home. So, that’s one of the many things that we’ll be able to do but we’re also going to be having an isolation room, something we realized after COVID-19 was very important, so we’ll be adding another isolation room.”
St. Francis Medical Center has the region’s only Level III NICU and Level II PICU, and that means families with sick children are able to stay close to home instead of driving to Jackson, MS; Little Rock, AR; or Baton Rouge.
If you buy a ticket online by noon today, you’ll be entered into Vantage Health Plan’s Last Chance Cash Blast Giveaway for the chance to win an extra $2,500.
Last year, they gave away $50K to one winner because they knew how hard it was on people during the pandemic. This year, the foundation says people are having a hard time getting new vehicles, so they wanted to give people the opportunity to win either a 2022 Nissan Titan Pro-4X or a 2022 Toyota 4Runner SR5 courtesy of Sparks Nissan and Van-Trow Toyota.
Over the past few years, they’ve been able to use proceeds to build a new helipad, allowing patients to be transported quickly and from further distances to get the care needed.
Dr. Thomas Gullatt, the new President and CEO of St. Francis, says they’ve been able to help 130 patients with the new helipad over the last year.
Just before the pandemic, they renovated the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) and moved it to the Pediatric floor. St. Francis Medical Center has the region’s only Level II PICU.
The hospital was also able to create 10 new ICU beds, which allowed more patients to stay at the hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic. Money also helps buy new technology for many departments including the NICU.
All of those advancements are made possible by a $50 raffle ticket.
After six years of doing the raffle, the St. Francis Foundation says the community has come together to raise about $1.4 Million dollars.
You can get tickets online by tonight at midnight! The winners will be drawn live on KNOE 8 News at 6 p.m. October 12th.
Here are the stories we’ve highlighted so far in the 2022 2 Cars 2 Winners Campaign:
Ouachita Valley Federal Credit Union
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