Mark Horne, MD, Chief Medical Officer at South Central Regional Medical Center, said today, “Elective medical procedures which do not require an inpatient stay will not be impacted by the order issued yesterday by the state health officer with the Mississippi State Department of Health. Only those non-emergent procedures which require a hospital stay are impacted.  Patients who have a procedure scheduled which requires hospitalization will be contacted by their medical clinic to get the procedure postponed. If you do not get a call from your medical clinic telling you your case has been postponed, your surgery will not be impacted.”

“The majority of surgery cases at South Central Regional Medical Center are elective surgery cases which do not require an inpatient stay, so this order will not have a major impact on our organization, however, we sincerely regret that patients who need procedures which require hospitalization will have their procedures postponed. The quality of life of our patients can be impacted tremendously when surgeries are postponed, so we sincerely hope those in our community will pull together and do what is necessary to reduce our rates of COVID-19 so this order will not be extended.”

Dr. Horne continued by saying that we all want to get back to some sense of normalcy in our community, but the only way that will happen is if we work together to reduce our COVID-19 rates. “Please wear a mask and socially distance up to 6 feet when in public, use hand sanitizers to keep your hands clean and avoid crowds and large gatherings. The only way we will see a drop in our COVID-19 rate is we all work together to reduce the spread of the virus.”