Hospital lands 30 rehab beds
Province tabs $8.25M for unit
More Windsor-area hospital patients should be able to return home sooner, thanks to a new $8.25-million, 30-bed rehab unit to be built at Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare.
The new unit — which should be complete later this year on a gutted second floor of the westend Tayfour Campus — will provide 30 reactivation/rehabilitation, or REACT, beds.
“This is exciting news for the Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare community — including for its patients, staff, volunteers and friends,” Windsor West MPP Teresa Piruzza said Tuesday in making the provincial funding announcement. “I am proud of the government’s commitment to help build this much-needed REACT unit, which will help seniors return home from hos- pital sooner and relieve acute care pressures on our local hospitals.”
No date has been set for the opening of the new unit, since hospital officials must still negotiate Ontario government funding to operate the facility.
Piruzza said the goal of more rehabilitation is to improve people’s quality of life.
“We need this additional service to help provide that level of support, to provide what they need to go back home,” Piruzza said. “Because we know that’s where people want to be.”
The rehab beds should help free up acute care spaces.
“It will enable us to provide more services, increase access and fulfil our mandate for meeting the needs of our community,” said Ken Deane, Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare CEO.
“Health care is personal. It affects us as individuals. It affects our loved ones.
“This investment increases our capacity to serve our community.”
Rehabilitating patients is an important step in the healthcare journey, especially for the older population, given that a third of patients over 65 tend to leave the hospital more disabled than when they were first admitted.
About 50 per cent of disability in older adults occurs during hospitalization.
About 20 per cent of patients over 65 and 30 per cent of those over 85 head from the hospital to a long-term care setting.
Robert Graham, a 62-year-old stroke victim who spent part of Tuesday working on walking with physiotherapist Carlos Giovanatti in a modern rehab room at Hotel-Dieu, considers the program top-notch.
“It’s great,” he said. “I’m doing what I’m supposed to. I like being able to work at getting better.”
He considers his rehab to be going well. And he likes the facility.
“It would be great to have one of these beds to take home,” he said with a laugh.