56 Day Challenge with CBCO

Clint Girlie speaks with Michelle Teter and Brad Terry from Community Blood Center of the Ozarks about their mission and their 2024 56-Day Challenge to help keep up with the 200 pints of donated blood they require per week.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Well, hello and welcome to ashow we call iHeart the Ozarks. This
is a half hour long show thatairs across all five of our iHeartRadio stations
here in Springfield every weekend, aswell as podcasts on iHeartRadio. It'd be
weird if it didn't. And it'sa show that focuses in on community groups
or efforts. Sometimes it's just individualswho are doing a ton of good for

(00:20):
our community. And I'm excited fora couple of reasons about this week's show.
And number one, it's our firstof twenty twenty four, which in
some ways is monumental, in someways not so much. But also the
main reason we're excited is because ourfriends from CBCO, that's Community Blood Center
of the Ozarks are here. Andso hello to Michelle and Brad. Michelle,

(00:45):
introduce yourself your position over there atCBCO, and then tell me about
how your cough is going. Okay, So my name's Michelle Teeter. I
do media relations for Community Books andare the Ozarks. My cough is clearing
up a little bit. I'm myclear my throat a little bit. Hopefully
it won't be annoying. Okay,Well, I'm glad that you're here,
and I'm glad you're well enough todo this. We are doing this via

(01:07):
video chat because I didn't want tobe around your disgusting germs. Okay exactly,
I don't want to give you mygerms. In the new year.
We want to keep everybody healthy.Actually, this is a weird one because
this is the first one I've done. I think from inside of our studios.
Typically I work out of my homestudio, but today my children are
just on the other side of thewall I'm staring at right now, and

(01:30):
it's their last day of school ornon school before they go back from Christmas
break. And I have to tellyou, after almost three weeks with them,
I'm so ready. I'm so ready. Michelle and Brad, they go
on a little stir, had toget out of the house today. So
here we are. Brad, introduceyourself field trip. Yeah, my name
is Brad Terry. I am acommunications supervisor here at CBCO, and I

(01:55):
am staying away from Michelle as muchas possible, but for other reasons,
bennor com understandable. I've picked upon a similar vibe from Michelle. Brad
and I have to also compliment howmany years have you been with the Community
Blood Center going on fifteen? That'sawesome, man. So he's got all
kinds of stories, yeah, timesand an incredible beard. Yes, really,

(02:16):
well done to you, and don'tdo anything to it in twenty twenty
four, just let it go,Brad, it's going to go. I'm
gonna go for the Santa Claus lookby Christmas. So I'm excited to talk
to you guys. Number one.I don't believe any of us have ever
had like a long conversation. AmI wrong in that? Michelle? Do
I just have a terrible memory?No, you're correct, You're correct.

(02:38):
This is gonna be it. We'regoing to talk for thirty minutes. Well,
we're killing time right here off thetop, so let's morn on a
twenty five. You know, let'snot get carried away or anything. But
I am also excited because I feellike CBCO is one of these places that
everybody knows it exists, and everyonehas some kind of understanding as to how
important the things that have happened thereare. But do they really or is

(03:02):
that just you know, piece togetheracquired knowledge over the last however many years
CBCO has been in existence. SoI really want to drill down into what
it is that you guys do,why it is such a vital thing not
just for the world but our communityspecifically, and then get into some really
cool stuff. I know you guyshave happening here to kick off twenty twenty

(03:23):
four. So first and again jumpin whomever wants to answer any of these
questions at any point. Well,I'm fairly new compared to Brad as being
a staff member, and I'm probablyclose to approaching a two year mark,
and I would say not everybody knowswhat Community Blood Center of the Ozarks does

(03:43):
and that we're here in the community. Yeah, so what do you doing?
That's so what do we do?We try to get the word out
a little bit more and that's onereason we're talking to you today. Yes,
so, Community Blood Center of theOzarks is the sole provider of blood,
plasma, and platelets to forty fivearea hospitals in southwest Missouri, Northwest

(04:03):
Arkansas, in Southeast Kansas. Solocally that would be Cox Mercy. We're
providing the blood to those hospitals andpatients who are there. Why is it
important to have a local place doingthis? So when a patient's needing,

(04:24):
it can be there in a quicklymanner to get them the transfusion as quickly
as possible. So and again I'mjust gonna go full on ignorant today it's
all on display. So enjoy.Are you telling me that hospitals don't have
like rooms and rooms and rooms justfull of bags of blood they can just
draw from. I'm gonna go withno. They do have a lab.

(04:48):
But you know, one patient couldhave a surgery and something tragedy happens.
That patient could actually use up alot of unit of blood at one time,
and that's going to need to berestocked pretty quickly. Brad, you
want to get you, I'll jumpin a little bit. So you have
all the little rural hospitals and thenthe big ones in the bigger metropolitan areas

(05:14):
they have a blood bank there onsite that it gets them through an emergency
whatever the emergency room could handle atthe time, and then our distribution department
they have to be here on calltwenty four to seven so that if something
does come in at what we callan MTP and mass tans using protocol,
the emergence room can get going,but then we immediately will start sending other

(05:35):
pints out of our supply. Soif you take a blood bank that's inside
Cox Health, they may have onehundred pints or so, where we have
about twelve hundred dollar reserve. Wow, so they could get started and then
we'll run and replenish that while they'redoing their thing. And then as you
get to the smaller hospitals, theyhave a smaller reserve, so they'd like
to and I don't know what theexact numbers are, but some of them

(05:58):
have as few as ten or fifteenpints in a smaller hospital. Now again,
because I don't know anything, areyou all your own separate entity or
are you a thing that like thehospitals have all gone in together and said
we need to build one of these. So let's throw in something like how
how did you come to existence?And who is your lord? Essentially,

(06:21):
so well, we hit we were. We have a board that's made up
of all the community members and somehospital board members, and we have a
different from all over the area.So we came into existence in nineteen ninety
five because at the time we were, the hospitals were being provided by a
national provider. And the problem withthat is is if you have a national
provider, they send the blood where'snationally needed and if a need, if

(06:44):
they deem a need great or somewhereelse, and there's going to be a
shortage here. So basically, thehospitals got together and decided they needed a
local provider, independent, independent thoughfrom all of the hospital like, you
don't have a preferential like Cox getsit first or anything like that. And
everybody gets the same price, everybodygets the same treatment, okay, And

(07:05):
that was dictated by Mercy where SaintJohn's at the time back in ninety five,
Cox, Sell Systems, CMH,Freeman, Mercy and Jopla, the
bigger ones said no, we wanteverybody to be treated the same. We
want our entire area to be providedequally, no preferential treatment. So I
see, I see, and sowalk me through that. Because you guys

(07:27):
are off of Campbell right headed towardsNIXA, South Springfield, big facility.
Every time I drive by it,I think, does it have to be
that big? Is there that muchblood in there? But then as you're
talking, I'm realizing, Oh,you've got different things happening in that building
besides a room where people give theblood and a refrigerator where you store it

(07:47):
right what all goes on inside yourcomplex there. So we'll start and then
I'll let Brad jump in. Sowe have the donor room where we can
take the blood from donors. Springfield'salso our headquarter office. So we have
three other donor centers. We haveone in Joplin, one in Bentonville,

(08:07):
and one in Springdale. So ourHR is here, like admin offices and
things like that. We have ourlab for testing. We also have like
an immunology lab that does other testingfor the hospitals and patients. We have
an area for the plasma and platelets. So there's storage, there's the distribution

(08:31):
area, so that's where the blood'son the shelves after it's been tested,
and then that's where they're kind ofdistributing it to the different hospitals. I
know they have different routes, solet's just say Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday,
they're going to Freemen in Joplin.Those are their planned routes. But

(08:54):
then if there would be an emergency, they make a phone call and say
we need X amount of this bloodtype and they'll make an extra run.
Shall also have like a mobile stagingarea. Where we have our mobile units
and they're getting everything ready for thosedrives going out the next day. So
we do about five to seven mobileblood drives a day besides our four donor

(09:16):
centers five to seven a day,yes, where we need about two hundred
pints every day, wow to theneed. So let me ask you this,
when you guys talk about the need, is it really the need?
Or is it like when I say, like I like to keep a certain

(09:37):
number of dollars in my bank accountbecause if I go under it, it
makes me feel like I don't havea lot of money. But I could
write something comes up, I couldgo down, there's still going to be
some money in there. So whenyou talk about the need, is it
uh like like what the example Ijust gave where it's a we don't want
to go below this mark even thoughwe have some here, or is it

(10:00):
if we don't get this we havenothing. It's it's both kind of you
know, they call us a bloodbank, and that's a little bit deceiving
because in a bank, you canput your money in and it'll stay forever.
Theoretically, here it does not.So when we're talking red blood cells,
which is the main thing that peopledonate it, it's only good for
forty two days. Wow. Sowe kind of walk a tight wire act

(10:24):
of not having enough and having toomuch, because you know, the cardinal
sin of us is not having theproduct when it's needed, but the secondary
is collecting it and not using itand having to throw it away because it
expired. So we have a windowthat we have to stay in. So
two hundred pints a day if wecollect that and it's the right mix of

(10:45):
blood types, which we kind oftalk to our donors differently to make sure
that we have that right mix comingin that gets us through all the distribution,
and we should barring a major usageevents like the job in Tornado back
in eleven or something like that,Mari, something like that. The two
pints a day lets us walk thattightrope with relative comfort of not destroying any

(11:07):
after you know, not going anyaway because it expired, and then also
having a shortage. And we havegreat donors. If we get too little,
we send out the word, theycome, They come in and get
that supply right back up. Soyou mentioned six to seven events a day
where people are donating blood, andyou're doing this, you're going to them
or nearer to them than your facility. Where are you going? So we

(11:31):
have a forty one county radius thatwe go to. So we could be
in Ralla, we could be inLebanon, we could be in Salem.
We could be down a mountain grove. Then to the Arkansas side, we
could be in Peeradge, Prairie Grove, Fayetteville, Bentonville, Parsons, Kansas.

(11:56):
Just we just acquired a hospital.There is anywhere that we can think
we can get twenty high school's,churches, businesses, auxiliary groups, just
a community drive in general, asdrives, which we call is somebody like
if somebody uses a lot of bloodand a group of people want to have
a drive in their honor, we'llwe'll we'll accommodate that. So anywhere where

(12:16):
we think we can reasonably collect twentypints, we're going to set that up
and go. Do you guys livein a constant state of stress with this
two hundred pint mark? No?I'm I'm really asking because what it sounds
like you you mentioned walking a tightrope. It's it's twenty four to seven
three sixty five. The over undernever changes unless you mentioned some kind of

(12:39):
event that sounds so stressful to me, it is. Okay, if it
was easy, they wouldn't need us. So yeah, okay, Wow,
Well we're talking with Brad and Michellfrom a CBCO. I'm learning a lot.
If you couldn't tell. This hasbeen very informative so far. And
as we kind of approaches halfway mark, you mentioned the number you got to

(13:03):
hit every day on average in orderto make sure you guys are stocked and
ready for whatever happens. I noticedlate in twenty twenty three, which was
so long ago, that you guyswere going to do some pretty cool incentivized
stuff kicking off the new year hereto make sure that you met that number.

(13:26):
And can you go into a littlebit more detail because a lot of
this like I've never heard of ablood bank or blood center doing something like
this before, but again I'm dumb, and so we've established that. Can
you go into a little detail aboutwhat's going on here as we kick off
twenty twenty five? Yes, Sofor January, we have a fun promotion
going on called the fifty six DayChallenge. It's actually for January and February,

(13:50):
and the purpose of it is thatbelieve it or not. Somebody can
donate every fifty six days. Traditionallywe have people who donate about once twice
a year. We would like toencourage people to give more frequently, more
than one or two times a year. So every fifty six days. It's
sponsored by Adis Winkam with the FlatBranch home loans and there's prizes money involved.

(14:16):
So they have to sign up byFebruary twenty ninth to register to participate
in the challenge. So they're justsaying, yes, I want to participate.
They don't even have to have donatedyet. Then they start making donations.
Obviously, the more they donate,the more they could win. So
if they've donated twice, their namegoes in the drawings twice. If they've

(14:37):
donated three times, it goes inthree times. So each time the pot
goes up a little bit higher,their name can stay in. So let's
say they did donate six times andtheir names stayed in, they have the
potential to win up to fifty sixthousand dollars. Say that, Hold on,
what say that? Again? That'sa lot of money. It is

(14:58):
a lot of money, and we'retrying to enc urage people to come in
the door and donate. So thatsays two things to me. Number One,
how do you guys have fifty sixthousand dollars to give away? Because
that's so much money. Thank youto Adam's twinket and plat rates homework.
Okay, So it's the giving branch. So it's your sponsor's coming in and
saying we're putting money where our bloodveins are awesome. Number Two, that

(15:22):
giant of a number suggests to methat giving early in the year tends to
fall off. Am I wrong inassuming that January is kind of a challenging
month for us? Partly, youknow, the holidays have just hit.
People are getting sick, they don'twant to get out and donate. Sometimes

(15:43):
winter weather can play a factor andit could potentially cancel some blood drives.
So let's say winter weather happens andschools are canceled, They're going to cancel
their blood drive. So we havethe potential to lose what was planned.
So that's why we try to dosome good promote to get donors in the
door and just keep them donating.And I would add to the fifty six

(16:06):
day challenge. The reason why wekind of go with this is because just
like when you hire an employee,it's cheaper to keep an employee than train
a new one. Same thing withdonors. Once you get somebody who you
know can donate, it's so muchmore effective and efficient. And if they
would just donate again, because they'relikely are eligible to donate, they don't

(16:27):
have medications or travel history and thatwould prevent them from it. So the
average donor donates one point seven timesa year and that's it. And you
can donate six times a year.So we could get everybody that does donate
to donate just one more time,we would have no shortages that ever,
you mentioned the donor specifically there beingsome it sounds like some things that would

(16:52):
prevent them from donating donating. Whoare you looking for to come through the
door? I just always assumed youjust needed to be alive, you know
what I mean. That's a goodtrait. Yeah, the three things.
You have to be at least sixteenyears old, OK, you have to
weigh at least one hundred and tenpounds and feel healthy and well where if

(17:15):
you meet those three criteria and nothave donated in the last fifty six days.
If you meet those you can registerand attempt. Then you go through
your health history and there are medicationsthat you may be on that could prevent
you from donating because we don't wantto you'll send that on to a patient
potentially, or if some of therules are in place to protect the patient

(17:37):
who's receiving it, some other inplace to protect the donor who's getting it.
So if your blood pressure's out ofcontrol, we're not going to We
don't wait to donate because you mighthave a reaction on the bed or heart
rate or whatever. I mean,there's things that can prevent you from it.
But if you can do those fourthings, that's who we're looking for.
Sixteen hundred ten pounds, feeling healthyand well, come on, give
it a try. How do youguys, and again this is just me

(18:00):
learning, how do you guys makesure the people that come in to donate
blood that their blood is safe togive to somebody else. So we have
a series of questions that we askthem. There's about forty five or fifty
questions that we asked them about wherethey've traveled to in the recent history,
lifestyle medications, they're on, surgeriesthat they've had, whatever, they answer

(18:23):
those questions and then we if necessary, we have follow up questions. So,
yes, you've had a surgery inthe last six months, what was
that surgery for? As your doctorreleased you from care? All of these
kinds of things. The book isliterally, you know, inches fIF on
all of the follow up questions.So I couldn't possibly get into all of
it. But as FDA brings outchanges and all that kind of stuff,

(18:47):
we roll that into our our healthhistory findings and they just determine at that
point in time. And then wealso after it's donated, test tubes are
drawn and we send them to alab and every single pint gets tested for
twenty five major hepatitis and HIV andWest Nile virus and shaugust all those all
those things, and every every pintgets tested. Okay, well, I

(19:11):
always I think assumed that that thatseems like a huge undertaking too, that
if you're looking for two hundred pintsa day, that's two hundred samples to
day you got to send off.And it's a whole thing. But I
mean it makes me it's the bigbuilding. Yeah, no joke. We
had about two hundred employees, sothat's that was going to be one of
My questions is how many how manypeople, uh, does it take to
run that place? So about twohundred that's well, that's two hundred paid

(19:33):
employees. Then we have a hundredsof non paid volunteers that run our blood
drives outside high school students and churchvolunteers and then and HR departments and what
and businesses that helped that we couldn'tdo it without them. Yeah. So
I asked this question to every nonprofitthat we have on here, and I'll
ask it to you guys too.Don't read anything into it other than just

(19:56):
my curiosity. How are you fundedit? Recovery cost? So we take
all of the costs that it takesto collect the blood and test it and
distribute it and all that, divideit by the number of pints, and
that's what we build a hospital.Gotcha? Okay? And does each hospital
pay the same rate? Is thatwhat I got from the beginning of this
at regardless of rural, small townor cox or one thousand pints a year,

(20:21):
they get the same price. Awesome. This is really good information to
have Brad and Michelle from CBCO joiningus here on iHeart the Ozarks. Michelle,
you were talking earlier and I thinkI just got sidetracked because I tend
to do that just about the yeah, the minutia of what happens within your
building, and not talking about what'sgoing on the promotion of you know,

(20:45):
what's happening here in January and Februarywith your fifty six thousand dollars, crazy
huge number that you guys are goingto give away and stuff. What else
is going on? How else arewe incentivizing folks to come by and give
blood? So we also have afreehood someone donates in January and February,
they get a free hoodie. Januaryis also National Blood Donor Month. So

(21:07):
it's kind of our way of sayingthank you to the donors because we couldn't
do it without them. You know, we're employed, but they're donating on
their time and giving to help saveother people's lives, and we couldn't do
it without them. And I'll kindof throw in another thing. We have
what's called our Donor Rewards Program whereif you donate blood, you'll get points
and you can redeem those points forget cards to like call Versus, Dairy,

(21:30):
Queen, Bass Pro, Walmart,and you can also collect your points.
We have what's called LAFE Points Lift, where we work with I think
eleven other charities. You can donateyour points to those charities through us,
and then we'll cut a check forthat money equivalent and send them a check.
So, if you're a big fanof Ronald McDonald House, for instance,
you can donate your points to RonamaDollar House and we'll send them.

(21:51):
We'll send rona Donalhouse a check.Well, that's just all super awesome stuff,
you guys, this is really cool. How do people besides just showing
up randomly at your building with somany different events that you guys have over
the course of a month and thesetwo months expecting probably some more interest in
it, how do folks even beginthe process of donating blood that they're just

(22:14):
sparked with the idea that's something I'dlike to do. Where do they go
from there? So I would encouragepeople to visit our website at www dot
CBCO dot org or they can callfor one seven two two seven five zero
zero six. They can schedule anappointment or they can find out more information.
I feel like if they schedule anappointment, it makes it a little

(22:37):
bit more pleasant experience and a littlebit faster. When you have an appointment,
they can send you a link theday of and you can fill out
a donor quick Pass and that helpsshorten your weight time as well. The
total process to donate usually when youwalk in the door to leaving, is
it about an hour's time that's checkingin, doing your health history, about

(23:00):
fifteen minutes on the donorbed. Actually, then afterwards you move to like a
snack erea. You can have asnack and a drink and they're just making
sure you feel okay before you leave. Also, on our website, so
let's say someone's listening in Lebanon andthey're wanting to know, well, I'm
not going to drive to their donorcenter in Springfield. On our website,
you can put in your zip codeand you can see when blood drives are

(23:22):
going to be in your area.So like, oh, maybe there's one
coming up the end of January andI want to donate there when they come
in Lebanon, and I could schedulean appointment for that. One. Last
couple questions and then we'll kind ofrecap the promotions happening. Has there ever
been an incense in either one ofyours collective careers? Where we've run out

(23:45):
of blood, not like anything else. I don't know what I'm asking you.
Like you guys ever run out oflike flower you had to go next
door blood guys, I will saythat we know we've gotten close a couple
of times, and one a jobinTornado always comes to mind because that affected
such a large number of people andthere were so many injuries. We had

(24:08):
enough and during that time. OHnegative is the type of blood that's used
a lot because it's the universal typethat anybody can receive. So that's the
so if you have somebody that's injured, you don't have time to test them,
they get o neegative. So wehad enough to absorb the initial trauma
of victims, and then our donorsare so great we didn't even have to

(24:30):
put out a call. They justshowed up when we got there. The
next that happened on a Sunday.When we were at work Monday morning,
there was about two hundred and fiftypeople lined up at the door. So
within twenty four to thirty six hours, our supplies were right back where they
kind of needed to be. Therewas also a train wreck in Arkansas a
few years ago that we used quitea bit. We've always managed it.

(24:55):
So we we get sometimes where it'sa less than one day supply, which
we call it the most in outan appeal to those types that were low
on and we had never failed tonot have donors come in. They just
are great about it that we livein a great area of giving people.
That's fantastic. Okay. So arepart of something called Burke Blood Emergency Readiness

(25:17):
Corp. And that started during COVIDand it was a lot of community blood
centers across the United States coming togetherand forming this organization so that like every
three weeks we might be on call, there's about ten blood centers that are
on call, and on your oncall week, you're sitting black back so

(25:37):
many units of blood in case ofan emergency. So an example would be
when the Uvaldi shooting happened, wewere on call and we sent blood for
that emergency because they needed help downin Texas. So if we were ever
in an emergency situation, we couldcall on our time to the on call

(25:59):
centers and they would help us aswell. All right, one more time,
fill me in. With two minutesto go of the incentivized giving CBCO
is having here during January and February. So January is we're kicking off the
fifty six day challenge. We wantyou to register online at our website by

(26:22):
February twenty ninth saying you want toparticipate. If you do, come in
and donate in January and February,you get a free hoodie. And then
the goal is you'll sign up tosay you want to participate in the challenge
and you'll start donating. So wewant to get you in the door,
get you donating, and then yourname goes in the drawings. We'll start
drawings in April once a month,and the goal is you could win up

(26:45):
to six fifty six thousand dollars okayand best by the end of the year.
And best place to go for informationabout how to start donating is where
our website at www dot cbco dotorg. Awesome, awesome last question.
I try to when we go intothese shows, trying to come up with

(27:07):
questions that I wouldn't ask, butquestions that like maybe the naysayingst of naysayers
might So this last question is forthem, maybe that final hurdle to get
them over the skepticism of donating bloody'all do anything weird with that blood?

(27:30):
Well, we put it into somebodyelse. Oh that's yeah, that's weird,
no doubt about it. But nothingelse. Just think back in the
Civil War days when they first starteddoing this, I mean they use that.

(27:51):
That's a pretty bold move. Dogblood right, what is it?
Blood's blood back in those days?Milk? Yeah. Yeah, you guys
have been fantastic and I don't knowwhy we haven't done this sooner, but
I'm super excited about knowing you andmoving forward. Good luck with everything.
January and February for having us.How many times did I call? I

(28:14):
didn't hear you once? I didn'teither. Also, Brad, that's the
hardest I've ever laughed on one ofthese shows. That's pretty I mean,
that's a solidly timed especially on avideo chat. To have the timing down
like that's amazing. It's well doneto you. I'm here got Brad and
Michelle from CBC joining us here today. Thank you, by the way for

(28:36):
listening to iHeart the Ozarks again.If you just caught this episode maybe halfway
through, you want to listen tothe whole thing, or every previous episode
of this show. We have donebefore. It's very easy to track down
on the iHeart Radio app. Justsearch iHeart the Ozarks. You can find
this one and all the rest ofthem there. So for myself, Clint
Gurley and the rest of our staffhere at iHeart Radio in Springfield, have

(28:59):
a great rest of your thanks somuch for listening.