24-Hour Temp ER To Bring Back Lab and CT Scans Too!
Posted on Tuesday, January 7th, 2025
A temporary emergency room on the east side of Mercy Health Love County Hospital will open in April. This will mark the return of around-the-clock medical care one year after an F4 tornado tore through the hospital and other major businesses at Exit 15 on Interstate 35 in Marietta.
Mid-level providers will once again be on duty 24 hours a day, with the hospital/clinic physicians on call. They will treat drop-in patients and patients arriving by ambulance.
Also to resume, inside the ER, will be the full-service Laboratory Department that, prior to the tornado, served the hospital, clinic, emergency room, and the general public.
And the largest and most expensive piece of hospital equipment – the CT scanner – will be back in service, also inside the temporary ER. The building will be accessible from the clinic parking lot, with Legacy Park to the east.
All of these developments were announced by Hospital Administrator Scott Callender.
The temporary emergency room will consist of a group of modular buildings. Treatment rooms, a waiting room, a triage area, laboratory department, CT scanner bay, portable x-ray machine, registrar, and supply room will go inside.
These services have been sorely missed by providers, patients, and the people of Love County and surrounding counties who rely on Mercy Health Love County for medical care.
Elsewhere on campus, the Growers Market Building is undergoing conversion to EMS Station 1. The conference room of the Therapy Building is being renovated to restart the Radiation Department. The Social Services Building will receive interior repairs and resume offering rent-free offices to social service agencies and the Love County Senior Volunteer Program.
That leaves pending the Federal and State agency approval of plans for a new or renovated hospital building on its present site, in order to resume serving bed patients.
The hospital staff and Board of Control continue to work closely with insurers and the Federal agency FEMA whose guidelines control progress and whose funding will be central to restarting the hospital.
The temporary ER is the latest in a steady process of debris removal, demolition, and renovation that have taken place since last May.
Here is the chronology of actions going back in 2024:
December: Repair of the hospital’s maintenance building nears completion.
October: New roofs go on the Social Services Building, the former Adult Day Center, the hospital-owned building at 1300 Memorial Dr. that served as a temporary ambulance station for
months following the tornado, and the former Growers Market Building.
September: The former EMS Station 1 ambulance/training center and the former food pantry building
on hospital grounds are demolished due to tornado damage.
August: The hospital business and medical records offices moves into the hospital’s former Adult
Day Center, which had been vacant since the onset of COVID-19 in 2020.
July 25 The Therapy Building reopens. Outpatient speech, occupational and physical therapy
services resume. Ultrasound scans are also offered there. The community
room will be renovated in order to reopen the hospital’s Radiology Department.
July 1 The clinic reopens. Patient visits resume. Laboratory services are limited to blood
draws with testing taking place in Ardmore laboratories. Radiology services are limited to a
portable x-ray machine.
June 18 The hospital food pantry moves to a temporary location at the former Greenville School
cafeteria.
May 1 The hospital food pantry and the senior volunteer program’s commodities distribution
program resume temporarily at the Fairgrounds.
April 30 Telephone services for the hospital and the clinic are restored. Doctors and nurse
practitioners serve clinic patients by telephone and telemedicine visits until the clinic
reopens on July 1.
April 27 Tornado strikes the hospital at 10:30 p.m. No injuries or deaths occur as patients
are moved to safety in F4-resistant storm shelters are hospital grounds.