South Georgia Medical Center will accept inpatient admissions at its Smith Northview Hospital starting this week.
 
Hospitals and healthcare delivery systems across the State of Georgia have been encouraged to create more bed capacity to safely and efficiently care for a surge of COVID-19 patients. As a result, SGMC identified the opportunity to use the 45 beds at its Smith Northview campus as a part of its emergency planning and to support the State’s initiative to ensure bed capacity for our community.
 
SGMC President and CEO Ronald E. Dean said, “Given the uncertainty of future patient volumes across the region and at SGMC Main campus; the State of Georgia estimates of potential short falls in beds needed; and the ease of which these beds could be operationalized, SGMC requested and received authorization to utilize the 45 acute beds to treat Non-COVID-19 patients.”
 
SGMC’s Smith Northview Campus will continue to operate its other clinical and support services as before.

“We are very pleased to support our community and our physicians and staff are excited about providing inpatient services at the Smith Northview campus. With these beds, we now have the option of safely over flowing Non-COVID-19 patients to well-equipped and staffed medical / surgical beds and safely continue to support the needs of our COVID-19 patient units at SGMC main campus, a capacity expansion option we are pleased to make available for the community and the region we serve.”