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Americus Looks to Future

Sumter Regional Hospital's CEO survives a tornado and looks ahead.

Susan McCord

ALBANY — It's remarkable to Sumter Regional's CEO that no one was killed when a March 1 tornado nearly destroyed the Americus hospital. It's also remarkable that paychecks will be issued Friday, as usual, David Seagraves said. “It is amazing that we didn't have any deaths in the hospital due to the extent of the damage,” he said, at a board meeting of Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital. Phoebe had received the bulk of Sumter's patients, 43 of them, and stands now to assist Sumter Regional's doctors who currently have no hospital.

Seagraves had been on the telephone arranging to have patients and staff move to safety and away from windows when the EF3 tornado hit the city. “It managed to come right across the hospital property,” he said. Parking a half-mile away and climbing over trees in the dark to return to the hospital, Seagraves and many of the hospital's doctors and staff arrived to simultaneously treat and evacuate more than 60 patients to Phoebe, Palmyra Medical Centers, Crisp Regional Medical Center and Flint River Community Hospital in Montezuma, he said. Since the tornado, which killed two people in a home now visible from the hospital, the focus has been on clearing debris and assessing the tremendous damage, Seagraves said.
“All the beautiful trees that we once had on campus, they're all gone,” he said. “We are not able to occupy the building in any manner at this time. We are completely displaced.”

Some staff and contracted help are working to move records and equipment from inside the wrecked structure, and with GEMA's help the hospital has set a 50-bed “field hospital” for urgent care nearby, he said.

The remarkable thing is that, relocating payroll systems to South Georgia Technical College, employee paychecks will be issued on schedule Friday, Seagraves said. “We won't miss a payroll,” he said. “It was really amazing that we were able to do that.”

With 700-plus employees the hospital is Sumter County's second-largest employer and probably its largest payroll. The hospital plans to “retain our folks,” Seagraves said.
The future of the hospital's 55 staff physicians is particularly uncertain, Most of the doctors also are in private practice. Fifteen of the doctors had their offices rendered unusable. “They're under a great deal of stress at the present time. They have nowhere to send their patients for the services that we typically have. They're under stress, duress,” he said.

Working with its insurer, the hospital is evaluating the condition of three buildings, built in 1953, 1977 and 1999 that last week made up the 145-bed hospital where more than 800 babies were born last year, but there's no final word on whether the buildings can be repaired, he said.
Phoebe Putney's executive committee already had met twice since the storm to discern how best to assist Sumter Regional, Phoebe CEO Joel Wernick said. Phoebe board member Dr. Hasan Rizvi, noting that seven of Saturday's 10 newborns were Sumter births, said not only would Phoebe need obstetricians to handle births diverted from Sumter, it also would need pediatricians.

US Patent Numbers 7,720,998 B2, 7,836,207