Welcome to ZZ Sumter Regional Hospital

Support for Hospital Continues

From an emergency room in a church, to blue cloth tents, to a hard-walled urgent care center, Sumter Regional Hospital has come a long way since a March 1 tornado left most of its facilities unusable.

A throng of hospital supporters and employees made the statement Friday that they'd be there for the duration of the hospital's recovery.

“It just makes me feel good to wear the shirt,” said hospital employee Julie Hood, one of about 100 wearing white “Indestructible” T-shirts at a rally Friday. Hood and her friend Myra Grimsley both work in physician services at Sumter Regional. “We will be back,” Grimsley said.

A former hospital employee, Jennifer Cooper now manages MRS HomeCare, which provides health care supplies and services to patients at home. “We get all our business from hospital referrals,” Cooper said. “What affects them, affects us. We're here today to show support.”

Cooper and her staff would present the hospital with a check for $1,000 towards the recovery.

It was a day for donations and Albany's Life Christian Academy students presented a check for more than $1,500 that they'd raised.

Second grader Zibby Brock became concerned after the storm because Life Christian teacher Charanne Stewart also worked at Sumter Regional, said sixth-grade teacher Eron Lee of Leesburg.

“About a week later she said, Mom, I want to help them,” Lee said.

Brock, 8, said she realized “that I needed to help people that lost their homes and their jobs,” and wrote a letter asking for donations. It was widely circulated by e-mail, her mother said.

Brock and classmates were allowed to look inside the doors of the damaged hospital Friday.

Student Ila Price, 12, said getting classmates to donate money was easy.

“We just walked into the rooms and said, we need money for the tornado.”

Student Cheyenne Warren, 11, got her grandparents to make a contribution.

A Sumter County Primary School student, Kody Tissue, raised more than $1,030 almost single-handedly. Tissue, 8, from Leslie, said he decided to collect money after viewing the damage with his parents.

“I just wanted to collect money for the hospital,” Tissue said. “I thought they needed help and they did.”

Tissue and a few friends walked and bicycled their neighborhoods, asking for donations, and asked at church, he said.

Americus Mayor Barry Blount would proclaim Friday, May 11 as “Sumter Regional Hospital Day” and thank hospital staff “for the job that you've done and the job that you continue to do.”
On Thursday, the hospital's insurer had given its estimate of a payout for structural damages to the facilities, but Sumter Regional has yet to announce whether it will demolish or attempt to renovate the damaged hospital, several officials said.

But hospital CEO David Seagraves, his arm in a sling from a broken collarbone he'd suffered in a bicycling injury earlier in the week, said that a more modern hospital lies ahead for Sumter Regional.

“We'll have a new facility and it will be better than before,” he said. “What a great opportunity this presents us to reinvent ourselves.”

For two weeks the hospital has operated an urgent care center in two modular buildings adjacent to the former “tent triage” that was erected shortly after the storm, Vice President of Nursing Susie Fussell said.

Outpatient services including a pharmacy, lab, x-ray services, physical therapy and other offerings occupy one side, Fussell said; ambulances pull up to the urgent care center on the other side.

But on the concrete pad that once was the hospital's HealthPlex, in approximately 120 days Sumter Regional plans a real, temporary hospital, Fussell said.

Made of about 350 collapsible modular units that have been used for hospital installations in Kosovo and Iraq, the hospital will have about 79 beds, she said. About half of the needed units are already stacked next to the concrete pads. After much study the federal-owned “Cojim” units provided the fastest solution to erecting a hospital in Americus, she said.
Use of the urgent-care and outpatient center continues to increase as Sumter Regional attempts to maintain its local patient base as the hospital rebuilds.

“We went over 200 yesterday for the first time,” said Director of Education Mark Grimes.

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