COLUMBIA, S.C. — Hospitals in the Midlands treated more than a dozen victims Saturday after gunshots rang out from the Columbiana Mall in Harbison.
According to PRISMA's emergency manager, they have a very detailed protocol in place for possible events like this.
Brian Laney, PRISMA Midlands' emergency manager said they're involved in practice drills at least twice a year. Laney said in the summer of 2018, the hospital finalized its mass casualty incident training protocol.
"If a bad day's happening in Columbia, it's going to be our entire hospital that responds. So we actually deploy nurses that are normally on a floor down to the emergency department to help and to provide hands, possibly get patients up to the floor quicker. We'll immediately start pausing surgeries that haven't started yet to free up rooms," Laney said.
Saturday it was all hands on deck, and it's something PRISMA is trained for.
"Lockdown's a pretty standard procedure when you have a gunshot victim where violence may follow you or follow that incident. We'll go on lockdown for a period of time to protect our patients and our staff," Laney said.
Hospitals in the Midlands know the important role they play in saving lives when chaos strikes. They work hand-in-hand in situations like this with law enforcement and EMS.
"It's 100% up to them (EMS) where they go. They work with their transportation officer to figure out based on the acuity of the patients and what the hospitals, they'll call and assess how busy each hospital is to figure out the best way to distribute the load," Laney said.
Laney said planning in advance can help in the most horrific of circumstances.
Often times, in mass casualty incident training and reality, first responders attend to patients outside of the hospital to meet their needs immediately and track who they are.