Need surgery in Beaufort County? More help is on the way at Beaufort Memorial
.JPG "Russell Baxley, Beaufort Memorial Hospital president and CEO, left, with U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham at the groundbreaking ceremony for the expansion of the surgical pavilion. The project will modernize and increase the hospital’s surgical capacity.")
Beaufort Memorial Hospital has seen demand for surgeries increase by more than 4,000 procedures in the past five years and even the county’s largest health care facility can’t keep pace without growing their surgical capacity. The hospital announced construction Tuesday an expansion of the surgical pavilion to serve the increasing needs of the Lowcountry’s population.
Details of the approximately $24M dollar project, due to be completed in three years, includes adding two state-of-the-art surgical suites to focus on advanced procedures. Existing suites will be enlarged to accommodate new technologies and pre-op and post-op care areas will be renovated to streamline patient flow.
Russell Baxley, CEO and President of BMH said, “In 2018 we (the medical staff) performed 8,516 surgical procedures, serving Beaufort, Hampton, and Jasper Counties.” he continued, “today we will finish our fiscal year with 12,000-plus surgical cases performed or 4,000 more than 2018.” He also cited that this period of increased demand coincided with the pandemic and “the worst three years any health care worker can remember.”
“Yet we have the same amount of rooms, and the same amount of space in the surgical space as we did in 2018,” Baxley continued, “The need is great because we do not see the slowdown in surgical services coming anytime soon.”
According to hospital officials, planning for this project began in 2018 with the medical staff and architects collaborating to identify the space, technology and equipment needed to meet the area’s current and growing surgical demands.
U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, an advocate for $17.9M dollars of the project’s funding from federal sources, concurred with Baxley that the need locally has increased drastically. “Just demand - we are losing nurses - a whole generation of nurses is about to retire. We are going to have to up our game when it comes to training people in the healthcare profession. Diseases like diabetes are devastating to South Carolina. We have high rates of heart disease. When it comes to healthcare in South Carolina, the answer is, ‘more.’ More doctors, more nurses, more hospitals, more preventative medicine.”
Beaufort Memorial received the federal funds for the project, as part of the 2022 Omnibus Bill passed to provide support for critical infrastructure projects, according to the press release provided.
The hospital opened in 1944 and is currently licensed for 201 patient beds. The last time a major renovation was completed to the hospital was more than 30 years ago.