Nestled inside the fourth floor of Mon Health Medical Center’s north tower is Morgantown’s newest hospital: Acuity Specialty Hospital of Morgantown.
It’s inside Mon Health but its a separate hospital run by a different company with a mission to supplement the care offered at Mon Health and Ruby Memorial Hospital. Acuity is a Long Term Acute Care Hospital – LTACH, pronounced L-tack – that serves patients averaging a 25-day length of stay.
“We’re essentially a step-down ICU,” said Acuity CEO Frank Weber. The 25-bed hospital accepts patients who have spent three or more days in a regular hospital intensive care unit or need “prolonged mechanical ventilation” lasting more than 96 hours – four days.
Weber said there can be confusion about what they do. People might think they’re a nursing home or rehab hospital, but they’re neither. It’s a different level of care.
“We’re narrow focused with what we do,” Weber said. Patients may need to get weaned off ventilators, or heal from extensive wounds from surgery or trauma, and aren’t ready to go home or to a rehab hospital yet. “What we provide is an opportunity for folks to spend more time in that type of setting so they can heal. … We are really part of a continuum of care.”
Mon Health System President and CEO David Goldberg and WVU Health System President and CEO Albert Wright spoke to The Dominion Post in April 2019 about the need for a Long Term Acute Care Hospital – LTACH, pronounced L-tack – and their plans to establish one at this site.
Weber said construction to convert the floor to an LTACH began shortly after, in June-July 2019. From there, they had to fulfill a variety of regulatory requirements. Acuity opened as a short-term hospital – STACH – Thanksgiving week and got licensed and accredited in January. They’d had about 30 patients discharged by then.
From January on they went through a demonstration period functioning as an LTACH and just last week – several weeks sooner than they’d expected, Weber said – the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services gave Acuity its official LTACH designation.
Acuity employs 56 people, including nurses, nurse assistants, respiratory therapists and unit clerks, and is aiming to hire more nurses Weber said.
It doesn’t employ doctors. Mon Health and Ruby supply those: hospitalists who make daily rounds, along with a wide variety appropriate specialists – cardiology, nephrology, pulmonology, neurology for example. “They’re part of our staff when they step into our walls,” Weber said, but not employees.
Acuity Healthcare is the majority owner of the hospital, Weber said, with Mon Health System being a minority owner and leasing the space to Acuity.
Acuity Healthcare was founded in 2001 and is based in Charlotte, N.C. It operates LTACHs in Weirton – with branch campuses in Wheeling and Belmont, Ohio – along with Atlantic City and Willingboro, N.J. All but the Willingboro hospital are housed inside other hospitals. The company is employee owned.
CMS sets the 25-day average stay benchmark, Weber said. Acuity patients have stayed for a short a seven days or for as long as 40 the average is three to four weeks.
While they’re there, he said, they’ll get at least one doctor visit a day from the hospitalist team and usually more from whatever specialists they need.
Most do time with a therapist, Weber said, When they arrive they’ve been in ICU bed three to 15 days. “It’s very important that patients, when they come to our level of care, they start moving.” If they still aren’t ready to go home, the therapy gets them to a level where they can go to a rehab hospital.
“Albert and David have been very supportive,” Weber said. “I’m just happy to partner with both of them on this project. We’re just excited to be here in the community and provide a service that I think everyone recognizes has been needed in this market for a number of years.”
Danin Cather, Mon Health brand manager, used the phrase hand-in-glove: providers working together regardless of what organization they belong to. “I think this partnership’s a great example of it: hand-in-glove to better the community and take care of our patients.”
Dr. Ron Pellegrino, Ruby Memorial chief operating officer, said of Acuity, “It brings a service that we didn’t have in the community to this point.” Morgantown has rehab and skilled facilities but until now not an LTACH.
“We take care of increasingly complex patients,” Pellegrino said. “Oftentimes their care needs to go beyond the course of a typical hospitalization. … This allows us to be able to transition these folks to a group that has a focused interest and expertise” to get through the next stage of recovery.
In the past, Pellegrino said, Ruby has had to sent those patients to other cities hours away. That makes it that much harder for the patient and the family and sometime they would choose not to go because it was too difficult. “It’s a necessary tool for us and the community. We were really excited to get an LTACH here.”
Weber summed it up, “It’s refreshing to be in a city that has health care leaders that are willing to put their stake in that. … The whole reason we’re here is Mrs. McGillicuddy in Room 430.”
Tweet David Beard@dbeardtdp Email dbeard@dominionpost.com
