The chief medical officer at South Central Regional Medical Center commented Wednesday on the order regarding surgeries that was signed on Monday, July 6 by Dr. Thomas Dobbs, the state health officer for the Mississippi State Department of Health.
“Elective medical procedures which do not require an inpatient stay will not be impacted by the order issued by the state health officer with the Mississippi State Department of Health,” said Mark Horne, MD, chief medical officer at SCRMC. “Only those non-emergent procedures which require a hospital stay are impacted. Patients who have a procedure scheduled which requires hospitalization will be contacted by their medical clinic to get the procedure postponed. If you do not get a call from your medical clinic telling you your case has been postponed, your surgery will not be impacted.”
Dobbs order stated that “hospitals must maintain 25 percent of hospital capacity to treat patients with COVID-19. Due to increasing COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations and increasing demands on the healthcare system, and diminishing availability of inpatient medical services in certain locations in Mississippi: 1) Surgeries in Tier 1 and 2 (from Appendix 1) that require overnight hospitalization must be postponed beyond July 20, 2020. 2) Elective medical admissions that can be safely delayed should be postponed beyond July 20, 2020. Any surgery in Tier 1 or 2 that requires overnight hospitalization that is performed due to extraordinary circumstances must be accompanied by an extensive and compelling justification. This order is applicable to hospitals in the following counties: Hinds, Rankin, Madison, Forrest, Jones and Washington Counties.”
“The majority of surgery cases at South Central Regional Medical Center are elective surgery cases which do not require an inpatient stay, so this order will not have a major impact on our organization; however, we sincerely regret that patients who need procedures which require hospitalization will have their procedures postponed,” added Horne. “The quality of life of our patients can be impacted tremendously when surgeries are postponed, so we sincerely hope those in our community will pull together and do what is necessary to reduce our rates of COVID-19 so this order will not be extended.”
Horne continued by saying that everyone wants to get back to some sense of normalcy in our community, but the only way that will happen is if we all work together to reduce our COVID-19 rates. “Please wear a mask and socially distance up to six feet when in public, use hand sanitizers to keep your hands clean, and avoid crowds and large gatherings. The only way we will see a drop in our COVID-19 rate is we all work together to reduce the spread of the virus,” he concluded.