Prisma Health expands visitor restrictions

Columbia, SC—As a precaution to safeguard its patients and team members against potential COVID-19 exposure, Prisma Health is adding additional visitor restrictions, including screening questions, for all visitors entering hospitals. The change will roll out Monday, March 16, at all Prisma Health hospital and long term care facilities, including: 

• Prisma Health Baptist Easley Hospital, Easley
• Prisma Health Baptist Hospital, Columbia
• Prisma Health Baptist Parkridge Hospital, Columbia
• Prisma Health Children’s Hospital–Midlands, Columbia
• Prisma Health Children’s Hospital–Upstate, Greenville
• Prisma Health Greenville Memorial Hospital (GMH), Greenville
• Prisma Health Greer Memorial Hospital, Greer
• Prisma Health Heart Hospital, Columbia
• Prisma Health Hillcrest Hospital, Simpsonville
• Prisma Health Laurens County Hospital, Laurens
• Prisma Health Lila Doyle, Seneca
• Prisma Health North Greenville Hospital, Travelers Rest
• Prisma Health Oconee Memorial Hospital, Seneca
• Prisma Health Patewood Hospital, Greenville
• Prisma Health Richland Hospital, Columbia
• Prisma Health Tuomey Hospital, Sumter

Further visitation restrictions may be enacted by select areas, and additional facility-wide measures may be implemented in the future.

“It’s important to take these precautions to ensure the health of our patients, visitors, health care providers and communities,” said Connie Steed, director of infection prevention for Prisma Health. Steed, a national leader in her field, is also president of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology. “By taking this proactive best-practice step, we can ensure that our hospitals remain safe places to receive high-quality care.”

Community members are asked to follow these steps when coming to visit a Prisma Health facility:

• Check in at the main entrance, other designated entrance or Emergency Department entrance. Other doors may be locked. Signs will direct visitors to the open entrances.
• Only one visitor per patient will be permitted.
• Visitors will be asked questions to determine if they’ve had fever, cough, sore throat, body aches or nasal congestion in the past 24 hours. Your temperature will be taken. Visitors will also be asked about travel outside the country or exposure to a person testing positive with COVID-19.
• Visitors with those symptoms will be asked to go home and return when they are symptom free.
• Children less than 18 years of age will not be permitted to visit a patient in any hospital, except with approval by the patient’s physician.

For Prisma Health Children’s Hospital (Midlands and Upstate), visitors are limited to parents only. In the absence of one or both parents, one designated caregiver will be allowed to visit the patient. All visitors must be 18 years of age or older.

Under guidance of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Prisma Health Lila Doyle is unable to allow any family members, visitors, or non-essential personnel to visit residents at Lila Doyle. Visitation will only be allowed with special circumstances, for example end-of-life care.

As an extra precaution, Prisma Health is enacting additional practices at this time:

• Prisma Health Children’s Hospital – in both the Midlands and Upstate – is temporarily discontinuing visitation by community groups.
• Prisma Health is temporarily pausing volunteer service on its inpatient units, emergency departments and in other areas where volunteers have patient contact. Volunteers may be reassigned to non-patient areas.
• Prisma Health is temporarily pausing unnecessary vendor activity in its facilities and ambulatory offices. Essential pharmaceutical and medical device representatives will be screened and allowed into facilities for specific functions. Product sales and personal food delivery vendors are restricted from entering. Each hospital is establishing a site for flower delivery and Prisma Health team members will deliver flowers within the building to patients.

For more information about COVID-19 and Prisma Health’s continued response, visit PrismaHealth.org/Coronavirus.