MURRELL’S INLET, SC (WBTW) – Among the thousands of evacuees coming from Horry and Georgetown Counties ahead of Hurricane Florence are hospital patients.
“A patient evacuation- it’s a big undertaking,” Amy Stevens, Vice President of Marketing and Communications for Tidelands Health said.
Tidelands Health is following Governor McMaster’s mandatory medical evacuation for certain areas of the state. Their hospitals are making arrangements to evacuate around 100 patients from their two locations, Waccamaw Community Hospital and Georgetown Memorial Hospital.
“(We’re) working with the South Carolina Hospital Association to find hospitals that have availability, to take patients, and then moving patients out to those facilities where they’ll be out of harm’s way,” Stevens said.
Some of Tideland Health’s nurses and doctors will be evacuating with their patients to continue treatments at their new hospital.
“That really just helps with continuity of care. So that if a nurse has been taking care of you here, that nurse will be taking care of you there, and it just makes the process a little more seamless,” Stevens said.
Their patients are headed to various hospitals, and some have already been relocated to medical centers in Aiken. Tidelands Health says they are still working to finalize everywhere their patients will go.
While they are anticipating evacuating around 100 patients, Stevens said this number could change before their emergency rooms close on Wednesday.
“The ER’s are still open; we’re still taking patients, and so in that regard someone might still be admitted to the hospital, and so then we’re working to move those folks out too,” Stevens said.
If a patient is too ill to travel, and their doctors believe it would be more beneficial for their health to not evacuate, Tidelands Health staff will stay back at the hospital to provide care during and after the storm.
