Hilton Head Hospital said it moved all elective surgeries for coronavirus. It didn’t
In a Friday afternoon news conference, Beaufort County Council Chair Joe Passiment reported that his wife, Elissa, was having a knee replacement surgery that day at Hilton Head Hospital.
On a normal day, that would garner him little beyond well wishes for her speedy recovery.
On Friday, it raised an alarm.
Performing a knee surgery, usually an elective operation, was a stark departure from Hilton Head Hospital’s March 23 announcement it would heed S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster’s suggestion to halt all elective medical procedures.
At that time, Hilton Head Hospital spokesperson Daisy Burroughs said, “we are rescheduling all elective surgical and diagnostic procedures that are unlikely to have a significant impact on the patient’s health outcome if delayed.”
Several national healthcare systems and local state hospitals, including nearby Beaufort Memorial Hospital, have done the same thing in an effort to conserve space and equipment for treatment of potential COVID-19 patients, The Island Packet and The Post and Courier have reported.
Reached Friday, Passiment told The Island Packet that his wife’s surgery was scheduled for a later date but moved up due to an opening. On Saturday, he said that surgery was successful.
On the conference call, he praised the hospital for its screening measures — including taking his temperature when he arrived.
Hilton Head Hospital representative Burroughs, also reached Friday and asked about the elective surgery, said she could not comment on a particular patient’s case.
“We have developed guidelines for elective care given new guidance from authorities,” she said. “We seek to balance the needs for care for those with chronic or other illnesses that require healthcare diagnostics or procedures and where delaying it could cause them to require emergency care a few weeks from now, at a time when COVID-19 cases might be ramping up.”
Burroughs said the hospital’s two statements on elective surgeries were “accurate and congruent,” although the statements four days apart appeared to contradict.
A week of scrutiny
The hospital’s mixed messaging comes after pressure from officials to be more straightforward about its policies and potential cases of COVID-19. The hospital has denied repeated requests for information from The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette newspapers about potential cases, citing patient privacy laws.
On Thursday, Hilton Head leaders agreed to request daily updates from the hospital after Hilton Head Island Mayor John McCann said the hospital had decided to provide “no information at all” to local officials or the public about the virus at its facility.
The following day, the state Department of Health and Environmental Control released case data by zip code that answered questions local officials and media have long been putting to the hospital: there were three cases on Hilton Head Island.
Also Friday afternoon, a spokesperson for Tenet Healthcare — the for-profit company that owns Hilton Head and Coastal Carolina hospitals — shared an email that Hilton Head Regional Healthcare CEO Jeremy Clark sent staff and board members.
In it, Clark said staff and the community will see “increased communication” in the form of “videos, interviews and articles posted to our social media and other local media outlets” in the future. That communication “will not include comments on the health status of any patient in our care,” Clark wrote.
“In these truly unprecedented times, we are continuing our focus on being prepared, not panicked, and on providing high quality care to the patients in our hospitals,” wrote Clark.
The email said the hospitals have “adequate supplies” of protective equipment and are “tightly managing” inventory. Clark wrote the hospitals are “doubling our ventilator capacity with the use of anesthesia machines” and have made plans to re-purpose hospital space for COVID-19 patients.
The hospitals have agreements with larger facilities should a patient need to be transferred, Clark wrote.
This story was originally published March 28, 2020 at 2:23 PM.
