Ballad: Patients evacuated at Greeneville Community Hospital, phone outage hits system

GREENEVILLE, Tenn. (WJHL) – Ballad Health will suspend services at Greeneville Community Hospital, and a systemwide phone outage is impacting all of the Ballad facilities as the region reels from devastating floods.

Ballad announced on Saturday that it had activated its Corporate Emergency Operations Center (CEOC) in response to the severe weather that led to historic flooding.

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In a social media post, Ballad stated that services at Greeneville Community Hospital were being suspended. Water supply issues in Greeneville and direction from the local emergency management agency led to Ballad’s decision.

As of 1:50 p.m., Ballad was in the process of evacuating inpatients and transferring them to other facilities in the system. The families of patients are being notified.

The hospital’s emergency room will remain open for local emergent and obstetric patients.

Ballad also announced that it was experiencing systemwide phone outages at all facilities. All of Ballad’s locations were reporting intermittent outages for both incoming and outgoing calls.

Anyone who needs to contact Ballad for healthcare inquiries is told to do the following:

• Call 911 if it is an emergency

• Send questions to Ballad’s 24/7 chat function

• Direct urgent questions to Ballad’s social media pages (patient information cannot be provided through social media)

• Call 423-483-8500 for durable medical equipment inquiries

In the wake of the flooding, Ballad also stated that it is offering a flood assistance fund to support its team members and the communities it serves. Donations to the emergency fund can be made online or by calling 423-302-3131 on weekdays.

Ballad Health is also working with the Red Cross and local United Way agencies to facilitate donations of clothing and home supplies. Non-perishable food items can also be brought to Ballad Health human resources offices to be distributed to the system’s team member food pantries.

Services also remain suspended at Sycamore Shoals Hospital in Elizabethton as of Saturday, with the exception of the emergency room for local incoming patients. A total of 39 inpatients were evacuated from Sycamore Shoals on Friday.

Inpatients at Unicoi County Hospital were rescued along with personnel on Friday after the hospital was flooded. Those patients were transferred to the Johnson City Medical Center.

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