VALDOSTA – South Georgia Medical Center’s Berrien campus may be getting a new emergency room.

Ronnie Dean, SGMC chief executive officer, and the Valdosta-Lowndes Hospital Authority announced the study – and replacement in general – as something that’s been talked about for years.

Now the ball is rolling.

“We do have a preliminary set of drawings (and) we are engaging key stakeholders on what that might mean for the community and what the community may want to do to help us make that a reality,” Dean said.

Dean said it’s likely to be a $6.5 million project given its designs so far. Tax credit dollars are expected to be used in the project’s completion.

The Hospital Authority also approved $666,000 in hospital improvements that will be spread across three projects.

The first of the projects is an emergency room canopy replacement at the South Georgia Medical Center Lanier campus, approved at $183,000.

Randy Smith, SGMC chief operating officer, said it will be the replacement of the main 45-foot-by-60-foot canopy and the additional construction of a 25-by-60 automobile parking canopy.

Three new handicap ramps will be built, too. Tax credit dollars will be used to fund the project.

The nurse call system at SGMC’s Smith Northview campus is being replaced for $308,000. The current system is aging out, but even since its inception, the system has been problematic, Smith said.

“The bigger issue is that even in a worst-case scenario, if we do not get the (certificate of need) then this also impacts the bathrooms and all the outpatient areas we would need to operate in,” he said.

SGMC’s main campus in Valdosta will get a pneumatic tube system replacement for $175,000. It feeds to 40 different stations and 25 transfer centers.

“This has been on a break-fix for sometime now and we’re at the point where we really need to replace this to be effective in our day to day operations,” Smith said.

The Hospital Authority approved a bylaws change that adds a job description for chief medical officer.

It also amended the bylaws, saying all budget matters more than $500,000 must specifically be reviewed by the hospital board. The budget matter price was $50,000.

SGMC will also be working on retaining and gaining nurses as the Year of the Nurse continues in 2021. Smith said the hospital recognizes the pandemic has been hard on them.

“The nursing profession was already projected to have about a half a million shortfalls going into 2020,” he said. “That is going to continue to exacerbate as we close out 2021 and move into 2022.”

Smith said a half a million nurses are expected to retire in 2022. According to him, out of 4 million nurses, 60% work in hospitals and the other 40% or less work in academia.

This leaves the need expected to be at 1.1 million nurses. The pandemic has taken a toll on nurses and health care.

“When you look at that, they’re projecting one out of every four nurses, by the end of this year, will move away from the bedside,” Smith said.

It’s not about just looking to replace nurses but retaining them by the bedside. The aging population of SGMC’s coverage area makes it a paramount issue, Smith said.

SGMC’s human resources team is identifying ways to bring in new nurses, one of which is hosting internships at the hospital this summer.

These will be eight-week internships for nursing students in their last year of nursing. SGMC is looking to hang on to some of the students, especially those focused in critical care and the emergency department.

The hope is to help them refine their skills so when they’re ready to enter the workforce, they’ll have more knowledge than the average student.

HR is also beginning a geo-fencing campaign. Anytime a person enters a health care facility and opens a web browser within 100 miles of SGMC’s main campus, they’ll receive an SGMC ad about its locations and opportunities.

SGMC is continuing to work with local colleges to give health care students opportunities for scholarships.

The Hospital Hero is Shawn Lindsey, a Berrien campus radiology employee. He’s been an SGMC employee since October 1998 who’s considered a team player not limited to the radiology department.

“Regardless of whether he is performing chest compressions on code blue patients, calming an agitated GPU patient, deescalating a security situation or comforting an injured child, Shawn always puts the patient first,” hospital officials said in a statement.