St. Mary’s Medical Center Regional Blood Donor Center Celebrates 70 Years of Lifesaving Donations

Intermountain St. Mary's Medical Center is celebrating the more than 50,000 lives saved through community members’ generous blood donations. For more than 70 years, St. Mary’s has provided blood collection services to Grand Junction and the surrounding Colorado area. 

The St. Mary's Regional Blood Donor Center took its final donation last week as blood collection services are transitioned to Vitalant. Vitalant is the nation's largest independent, nonprofit blood service provider, and St. Mary's is honored to pass the blood collection operations to them. Vitalant will be opening a new donation center in Grand Junction in October staffed with all the familiar faces individuals have grown accustomed to seeing at St. Mary's, plus a few new ones. For more information about this shift, click here. 

To ensure a successful move to Vitalant’s new collection center, local blood donations will need to be paused for approximately eight weeks. In the meantime, Vitalant is working diligently to transition blood center operations while helping to expand the region’s blood supply. It is anticipated the supply and reliability of lifesaving blood products will increase with this new partnership. 

St. Mary's cannot emphasize enough that blood donations are still very much needed in the future! Interested donors are invited to sign up for a donation appointment at the new Vitalant donation center, conveniently located at 561 25 Road, Suite 102, Grand Junction. Schedule an appointment today by visiting vitalant.org/GrandJunction or by calling 877-25-VITAL (877-258-4825). Vitalant will also be scheduling community blood drives utilizing the bloodmobile soon.