SC’s first inpatient pediatric rehabilitation unit to open in Columbia

COLUMBIA, S.C. — For kids and teens who suffer life-changing conditions, like brain and spine injuries, substantial care is needed to get them, literally and figuratively, back on their feet.

But for years, their options to receive this type of specialized care have all required them to travel out of state, to places like Charlotte and Atlanta, where beds can be limited.

Having an option closer to home would have been a major help for the Johnson family of Orangeburg.

“It would’ve made a huge difference. Our family could’ve stayed together,” Chris Johnson said.

Thirteen years ago, the Johnsons had to split up, when then-three-year-old Naomi suffered a traumatic brain injury after a nonfatal drowning.

The closest inpatient rehabilitation center where she could progress in her recovery was in Charlotte.

“My wife had to stay with Naomi at Levine Children’s Hospital. I had to come home to take care of kids. So I would go over there, sometimes two to three times a week and on the weekends,” Chris Johnson said. “It was just tough.”

But starting next week, those types of difficult situations should be eased for more South Carolina families.

On Monday, the state’s first inpatient pediatric rehabilitation unit will open at Prisma Health Children’s Hospital – Midlands in Columbia.

“This has truly been a dream that we can now serve our children of South Carolina with these very necessary, intensive, inpatient pediatric rehabilitation services,” Prisma’s director of pediatric rehabilitation medicine, Dr. Colleen Wunderlich, said.

The multimillion-dollar unit will open after more than a decade of work, marked by stops and starts, until finally getting to this point.

It includes eight beds, which staff said is about average for units of this type across the country, with the possibility to expand in the future.

There, kids and teens recovering from life-changing conditions, like brain and spine injuries and tumors, along with those recovering their functions from long hospital stays, will be able to receive around three hours of intensive therapy a day, five days a week, staying for an average length of about two to three weeks.

“They will recover more quickly and reengage in school and play and being a child. They’ll recover more fully than they ever would from their accidents, their injuries, and their illnesses,” Children’s Hospital Senior Medical Director Dr. Caughman Taylor said.

Hospital leaders said this will alleviate the burden on South Carolina families and help put more kids like Naomi Johnson, now 16, on their way to recovery, closer to home.

“I think it’s really special for a lot of kids like me,” she said.

Taylor said the hospital received some one-time money from the state legislature for this unit, but he added they hope to receive more funding in the future, given this is the only unit of its kind in all of South Carolina at this point.

Prisma said donations accounted for about $735,000 toward the unit’s construction, with donations and reimbursements funding operations once it opens.

Feel more informed, prepared, and connected with WIS. For more free content like this, subscribe to our email newsletter, and download our apps. Have feedback that can help us improve? Click here.

Copyright 2024 WIS. All rights reserved.