Staying near Southern Regional Medical Center

Southern Regional Medical Center is just over a mile from our front desk, on Upper Riverdale Road. That distance is the whole reason this page exists. A hospital stay is almost never planned. Someone is admitted, and a husband or a daughter or a sister suddenly needs somewhere to sleep that is close enough to get back quickly, cheap enough to keep paying for longer than expected, and quiet enough to sleep in the middle of the afternoon after a night in a chair beside a bed.

Just over a mile up Upper Riverdale Road

We are at 6358 Old Dixie Highway, which at this address is US 19/41. The hospital sits just over a mile away on Upper Riverdale Road. There is no interstate leg involved and no complicated routing, which matters at two in the morning when a phone call means you need to be back on the ward.

Ground-floor rooms open straight onto the property rather than into an interior corridor, so you park, open your door and you are in the room. Upper floors are reached by lift. Parking is free, directly outside the rooms, and the lot stays lit through the night. The lot takes cars, pickups and vans; if you are driving something larger, ring the desk before you set off and they will tell you honestly whether it fits.

What a hospital stay actually needs

The things that matter on this kind of stay are not the things a hotel usually advertises. Every room here has a mini-fridge and a microwave, which is what turns a room into somewhere you can keep food you did not have to buy hot at nine at night. There is free WiFi with no login page, cable TV, air conditioning you control from a thermostat in your own room, and a private bathroom with towels changed daily.

The front desk is staffed 24 hours a day by someone standing in the building. Coffee is at the desk from 7 to 11 each morning; there is no coffee maker in the room. Ice is complimentary.

Quiet hours run from 10:00 PM to 8:00 AM and they are enforced rather than posted. If you need to sleep during the day because you sat up all night, say so at the desk and ask for a room away from the road.

If the stay runs into weeks

Nobody arrives for a hospital stay knowing how long it will be. If it turns into a week, there is a weekly rate from seven nights, and a monthly rate from 28. Neither is published, because the figure depends on the room type, the time of year and the length of the stay — the desk quotes it on the phone.

A longer stay keeps the same room for the whole time rather than moving you around. If you are already here and the stay is stretching, tell the desk before the week is up rather than after.

If you need an accessible room

We have wheelchair-accessible king rooms. They are non-smoking, the bathrooms have grab bars and roll-in access, and they sleep two. There are only a few of them.

That last point is the important one. Requesting an accessible room through a form puts you in a queue; ringing the desk means a specific room can be held for your dates instead of you arriving to find it gone. The desk is staffed at every hour, so there is no window you have to catch.

Food, a chemist and a laundromat

There is no restaurant or breakfast here, so the practical things are all a short way up the road:

• Waffle House — about a hundred yards away and open 24 hours, which matters when you get back at three in the morning
• Drugbuddies Pharmacy — a quarter of a mile, for prescriptions and everyday chemist items
• La Morena Supermarket — just over half a mile, and where guests staying a while do their shopping
• Taste of Tara — about half a mile, for the mornings the microwave will not do
• 3C’s Coin Laundry — on Upper Riverdale Road, about half a mile away and on the same road as the hospital, open 7am to 10pm
• Shree Coin Laundry — a 24-hour laundromat about 1.7 miles south on Tara Boulevard, for the loads that will not wait until morning

Food delivery is welcome, to your room or to the front desk.

The hospital has its own ground-floor cafeteria, behind the A elevators, with vending machines beside it. Its opening times and the current visiting hours both change from time to time, so check the hospital’s patient guide rather than relying on anything printed here.

Arriving late, leaving early

Check-in is from 3:00 PM and check-out is by 11:00 AM. Every registered guest shows valid government photo ID at check-in and the minimum age is 21. Because the desk never closes, a late arrival is not a problem — but tell us roughly when you expect to get in, because a room request that nobody claims is held until 8:00 PM unless you call.

The desk can text you. If you are going to be at the hospital past visiting hours, that is usually the easiest way to sort out a room without standing in a corridor on the phone.

What this place does not have

Worth saying plainly, because a hospital stay is a bad time to discover it at the door. There is no restaurant, no bar, no breakfast service and no coffee shop. There is no guest laundry. Nothing is sold at the desk. There is no coffee maker in the room. This is a motel on a working road, not a hotel with a lobby to sit in.

What it does have is 90+ rooms, a person at the desk at every hour, doors that open onto the car park, and rates that a family can keep paying for longer than they expected to.

Worth saying to the desk

• That the stay is for a hospital visit, and roughly how long you think it might run
• That you need an accessible room, if you do, and on which dates
• That you may be sleeping during the day, so a room away from the road suits better
• Roughly what time you expect to arrive, especially if it is after 8:00 PM
• That you would rather be texted than rung, if you are going to be on a ward where a phone call is awkward
• Whether the stay is likely to reach seven nights, so a weekly rate can be quoted