Medics accuse Waccamaw hospital diversion of targeting Horry patients

After a Maryland man nearly drowned in a Garden City pool last week, medics tried to take him to a hospital that sits a little more than three miles away.

The man was floating face-down in the swimming pool when witnesses called 911 around 9:30 p.m. on Monday June 9 asking for help.

Several people at the pool pulled the man out of the water and where he started breathing again; then both Horry County and Murrells Inlet-Garden City Fire responded.

In the dispatch recordings, members of the MI-GC Fire EMS ask dispatchers to contact Waccamaw Community Hospital about their diversion status, “Call Waccamaw, find out what their diversionary status is, tell them I have a 40 year old male near drowning. He is responsive now, he's full. He needs to come to that facility. Medic 31 is going to be coming, will they accept the patient?”

Waccamaw staff refused to admit the victim, “I need you to mark the CAD that Waccamaw E.R. refused this patient because he was in Horry County. They will not accept him,” a rescue worker told dispatchers.

The hospital sent medics nearly 20 miles up the coast to Grand Strand Regional Medical Center in Myrtle Beach.

Horry County Fire-Rescue officials said they’ve investigated many complaints about Waccamaw Community Hospital’s alleged diversion practices.

Chief of medical operations for HCFR, Matthew Smith, told News13 many of the complaints turned out to be legitimate and the hospital had good reason to divert, but on many others, Smith said the diversion decision was questionable.

“Well, we can answer for what they have done with us and that we know that sometimes there are instances where we know that patients from Georgetown County are being accepted into the facility and that when we call them and tell them that we're en route with a patient, we're being asked to go to other alternative facilities,” Smith said of the hospital.

Smith said a priority of medics when they take patients to a hospital is to take them to a hospital of their choice because in many cases, some patients have a personal relationship and a level of comfort with doctors at particular hospitals.

Smith said diversions interrupt that relationship and especially when it’s a diversion that discriminates across county lines, “If it’s a matter of them not accepting a patient because of where the call originated from, I wouldn’t think that’s appropriate,” Smith said.

Waccamaw Community Hospital’s director of marketing and communications, Ronda Wilson, told News13 in an email that, “When WCH is 'on diversion', ambulance services will transport their patients to a hospital other than WCH hospital on diversion. If a patient is clinically unstable as determined by the paramedic, and the WCH hospital on diversion is the nearest facility, the patient will be transported to the facility for stabilizing treatment,” Wilson quoted form the hospital’s policy manual on diversions.

The hospital statement continued, “County lines do not determine diversion boundaries. Waccamaw Community Hospital is essentially located on the Horry County-Georgetown County line and serves the populations of both counties. When circumstances necessitate diverting patients, it is reasonable and makes sense to divert patients north of Waccamaw Community Hospital to one of the several other facilities located in Horry County and to divert patients from south of Waccamaw Community Hospital to the other Georgetown County facility.”

Smith said part of the problem is the fact that the hospital and EMS services in Horry County don’t have a written diversion plan.

Georgetown County Emergency Management director, Mike Mock, told News13 that county EMS providers and the hospital don’t have a diversion plan with the hospital there.

The patient from the Oceanside Village incident was released form Grand Strand Regional Medical Center on June 12, according to Joan Carroza, the hospital’s director of public relations.