STORY 1

From the Island News

A dream more than 30 years in the making was finally fulfilled for Beaufort City Councilman Neil Lipsitz in December, but the evidence finally aired on TV this week. After 17 failed attempts to get onto the show The Price is Right, Lipsitz was finally selected to be on the show as a contestant, a dream that has been on his “personal bucket list” for a quite some time.

Lipsitz said he has been going to tapings of the show for about 35 years hoping to get picked, and in 2024, he was selected to participate on the December 4 taping of the show. That episode aired on Monday, March 24. Lipsitz was there with his sister, Judy Thornberry. Though she has not traveled with him to every taping, she has been there to support him along the way. His wife has never gone with him to a casting session, though.

“She has no desire to go,” Lipsitz said about why his wife has not gone with him. “She is just glad I got it out of my system.”

After Lipsitz was selected in December, they attended one more casting call for the show to see if his sister would get selected, which she was not.

“I’ve always loved game shows,” Lipsitz said. “The first time I went, I camped out overnight just to get in there. Now they tell you where to sit, but back then it was a free-for-all. Wherever you got was where you sat. I sat towards the front and Bob Barker talked to me quite a bit during the show.”

Lipsitz said that they look for someone who has an abundance of energy, so before he went to his casting, he drank several cups of black coffee, which he said is a lot for him. He is not typically a coffee drinker.

Story 2

From the Post & Courier

A plan by Novant Health to build a hospital in Bluffton is one step closer to becoming a reality. It's the latest development to pit Novant against Beaufort Memorial Hospital in a legal struggle to establish a hospital in the fast-growing region. At the moment, Novant Health appears to have the upper hand after the S.C. Department of Public Health approved Novant's application for a certificate of need (CON), a document that's required before a hospital can be built.

Their plans call for a new 50-bed, 196,500-square-foot facility that is expected to cost $320 million to construct. The hospital, which will be known as the Novant Health Bluffton Medical Center, will be capable of expanding to 100 beds should demand grow. The Post and Courier previously reported that the facility will be located at the intersection of Buckwalter Parkway and Lake Point Drive.

“The approval of our CON application reaffirms Novant Health’s commitment to bring world-class medical care closer to home,” said Jason Bernd, Novant Health's president of the South Carolina Region in a prepared statement. “This hospital is a long-term investment in Bluffton and the surrounding communities to ensure families have access to high-quality care without having to travel great distances.”

Efforts to bring a hospital to Bluffton go back to at least 2018. At that time, Beaufort Memorial announced a joint venture with the Medical University of South Carolina for a 20-bed acute-care hospital. State officials approved the necessary CON, but progress ground to a halt when two local hospitals owned by Tenet Health appealed the approval. Those two hospitals were later acquired by Novant Health, which continued the challenge. The appellants questioned the project's financial feasibility and the need for a hospital in the area.