ATLANTA — The emergency room at Atlanta Medical Center shuts its doors Friday just over two weeks ahead of the hospital shutting down in its entirety on Nov. 1.
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Now, patients say that even before the hospital closes, they are being turned away.
Channel 2′s Tyisha Fernandes talked to a patient, who didn’t want to be identified, who was in a terrible accident in March and is relearning how to walk.
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She said the staff at AMC has turned her life around, but now that the hospital is closing, she’s going to have to find another physical therapist.
“The therapists I had, they were amazing and they really looked through all the things they could do to help me,” she said. “I was like, ‘I don’t want to start over.’ It’s been a long road to get where I am, to develop a rapport with someone else after doing so much work. That’s hard.”
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Even though the hospital doesn’t technically close until Nov. 1, she said she’s been feeling the effects of the closure for months.
“By the time my therapist told me they were closing, it was literally like, ‘OK, we have to cut our loads in half each week,’” she said.
AMC’s closing hasn’t just affected her, it has impacted her entire family.
Her husband was prescribed a transfusion because of his health, but was turned away at the counter because of the closure.
“He was prescribed a transfusion because of his health and because they were closing we were actually turned away at the counter saying they couldn’t do it we need to go to a hospital that can accommodate him.”
The patient Fernandes talked to said she’d like to keep her same doctors, but has to wait until she and her husband find new jobs.
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