This service, called Fast Track, gives patients the option of seeing a physician's assistant for medical care that is urgent but not an emergency. Fast Track services are available from 3 to 11 PM Friday through Monday. Loris Hospital also has opened a full complement of medical offices in North Myrtle Beach as well as the LCH Family Health Center clinic. One such outlying medical bureau that opened in 1997 is the North Myrtle Beach Physical Rehabilitation Center, which offers treatment for neurological, orthopedic and developmental problems. Here, patients can be evaluated and treated for accidents and strokes, muscular-skeletal injuries, strength and range of motion limitations, balance and coordination deficits, and gait and postural problems.
Speech therapists are on duty to evaluate and treat speaking, language and swallowing difficulties.
The medical staff numbers more than 750 with more than 150 physicians on call. A rehabilitation center now houses exercise equipment and supervised programs for cardiac patients that includes fitness, nutritional counseling, education and risk education. Prior to the birth of Grand Strand's cardiac surgery program in April 1995, the closest places performing open-heart surgery were Charleston and Florence, South Carolina, or Wilmington, North Carolina. For many, an hour or more was too long a jaunt for cardiac treatment and angioplasty. A satellite pharmacy services the operating rooms and the surgical intensive-care unit.