Georgia will soon reopen two closed hospitals and deploy temporary medical units to provide hospital beds for the state’s expected COVID-19 patient surge.
The state has committed roughly $72 million for these projects, including $12 million for additional medical staff at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany.
According to the governor’s office, the state purchased four temporary medical units with a total of eighty-eight beds. One 20-bed unit will be located in Rome and another in Albany. One 24-bed unit will be placed in Atlanta and another will be available to deploy based on community needs.
Gov. Brian Kemp and the state Coronavirus Task Force announced these units will be deployed in mid-April.
At the reopened Phoebe North Campus in Albany, there will be twelve new ICU beds available within the week, fifteen general beds and fifteen ICU beds by mid-April, and fifty-nine general beds in May.
At the reopened HCA Eastside Medical Center in Snellville, there will be a rolling start of twenty-four ICU beds and thirty-six general beds within a week and a rolling start, depending on staff availability, of thirty ICU beds and seventeen general beds by late April.
“These projects have been underway for several weeks based on modeling and epidemiological recommendations, and we are following leads on several more proposals to expand healthcare capacity as we prepare for patient surge later this month,” said Kemp. “In the days ahead, we will finalize additional projects to expand our capacity and get critically needed resources to frontline medical providers.”
The state’s leading public health and safety agencies and lawmakers are working with federal agencies, businesses, and community leaders across Georgia to prepare Georgia’s healthcare network for increased patient surge and medical needs.
