On March 27, Nashville resident Bill Boyce, 73, earned the unwelcome distinction of becoming the first patient intubated on Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s dedicated COVID-19 unit.

There has been nothing normal about the COVID-19 pandemic, and grieving the loss of a life at a time when families have been unable to gather beside a bedside to say goodbye, or to even hold a traditional funeral, has been one of the worst consequences of this health crisis’s uncharted territory.

Rachel Forbes, MD, MBA, associate professor of Surgery, has been appointed chief of the Division of Kidney and Pancreas Transplantation in the Department of Surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, effective June 1.

Howard Price has a decades-old green notebook he keeps in his office at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and when a shortage of a critical laboratory supply nearly brought testing for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, to a halt at the Medical Center, the notebook’s contents quickly became invaluable.

The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) recently announced that all Vanderbilt Medical Group (VMG) adult primary care practices have received NCQA Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) Recognition for using evidence-based, patient-centered processes that focus on coordinated care with the goal of improving outcomes.

A vital ingredient for COVID testing was unavailable anywhere. Then Howard Price remembered a recipe in an old notebook.