On Tuesday, May 19 and Wednesday, May 20 the Midland area experienced historic flooding, impacting routes from central Michigan to MidMichigan Medical Center – Midland. It’s important that our community know that MidMichigan Health continues to operate unimpaired in central Michigan at our campuses in Alma (Gratiot), Mt. Pleasant, and Clare.
It’s good to be part of a health system, especially at times of crisis. When any one of our communities or facilities is in need, we come to one another’s aid. Tuesday night, leaders from our central region (Gratiot, Isabella, Clare) established incident command from MidMichigan Medical Center – Mt. Pleasant. In about 90 minutes time, the team established plans for services normally provided out of Midland and accepted transfer of selected patient populations from Midland to Gratiot, including obstetric and critical care, before all roads became impassable.
In these intervening days, all three campuses are serving larger numbers of emergencies, urgent care visits and inpatients to offset the load on Midland while operations there are fully restored, including giving relief for our employees there to deal with the effect of flooding on their families and homes.
In a way, nothing really changed. MidMichigan Medical Center – Mt. Pleasant was designed as an extension of MidMichigan Medical Center – Gratiot. In the past and ongoing, Gratiot provides significant inpatient services to residents of Isabella County. Together, our three campuses are proud to care for western Midland County and in support of our sister facility in Midland until all communities can heal.