Construction continues on ICU area at Evans Memorial

CLAXTON, Ga. (WTOC) - Rural hospitals face struggles to provide services when they don’t have the number of patients larger ones see. In Claxton, they’re adapting to meet the challenge.

Hundreds of Evans Memorial patients must be transferred to other hospitals near and far for services like Intensive Care Units and more. Hospital leaders here say they need to be able to offer those services to serve patients in the community.

Demolition work rolls along in the area that will become a four-bed ICU. Walls will be replaced with glass sections to allow nurses to better watch patients and bring in equipment in a matter of seconds.

“These rooms will have much more access to immediate nursing care, immediate respiratory care, more intensive monitoring abilities,” said Dr. Jonathan Williams.

The hospital’s CEO says Evans Memorial can serve the community better if they can provide a larger range of services and keep more patients here for treatment locally.

“As we often say we want you to ‘buy local’, but we also want you to ‘seek care local’ because if people don’t seek local care, those facilities might one day not be available,” Evans Memorial CEO Bill Lee said.

The demo and construction will cost roughly $900,000. The hospital was one of ten statewide to receive rural health grants to help adapt to community needs and stay in business.

They hope to have the construction finished in May and have equipment and everything else in place to serve patients in June.

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