No Beds for Mental Patients at Phoebe Sumter

No Beds for Mental Patients at Phoebe Sumter
AMERCIUS - Area residents and the Sumter Area Ministerial Association will help create a task force to determine whether psychiatric beds should be implemented in Sumter County's new Phoebe Sumter hospital. Eric Bryant, chief deputy, with the Sumter County Sheriff's Office, said currently his department has so many inmates coming in with psychiatric problems that they have to ship some of them to jails in Columbus and Rome, places that sometimes don't have the room for these patients. Bryant said he hopes the new hospital will decide to add at least five to 10 beds. "There's a desperate need because of the number of mental patients in the county," Bryant said. According to a press release issued through Albany-based Phoebe Putney Health System, the Sumter Hospital Authority voted to accept Phoebe Health System's letter of intent to commit at least $25 million toward the construction of a new hospital to replace Sumter Regional Hospital that was damaged by a 2007 tornado and the rebuilding of the medical staff.
	Keith Petersen CEO of Phoebe Sumter Medical Center.
Under the agreement, Phoebe will offer certain core primary and emergency services, will recruit new physicians to fill vacancies due to the tornado, and would retain all currently employed and private practice physicians and honoring Sumter Regional's financial commitments to medical students. But Bryant said there are no plans to implement psychiatric beds at the new hospital. When the Sumter Area Ministerial Association expressed concerns at the lack of such beds to Phoebe officials, they were asked to create a task force and bring back statistics on the number of mental patients at the Sumter jail and in the area, as well as other pertinent information. The lead official is the new CEO of Phoebe Sumter Hospital, Keith Petersen. According to one person who attended the meeting, "Mr. Petersen was not very receptive of the idea to make psychiatric beds available." "Nevertheless, the task force will put together the facts," Bryant said. Bryant said he feels it's imperative for a psychiatric unit to be at the new hospital in order to address the needs of such patients; many of them will be left on the streets to commit more crimes or cause serious harm to them or someone else. If there is a place they can go for treatment we can avoid these dangers. He said having a hospital bed for them can help ensure they will have a place to stay until they can be stabilized or be transferred to a higher security hospital elsewhere. "The majority of these patients can be stabilized locally until they get well," Bryant said. Bryant said according to hospital officials, the psychiatric ward at Sumter Regional was shut down before the tornado hit. Marcus Johnson, a spokesman for Phoebe-Sumter could not be reached for comment.
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