FMC to partner with St. Louis firm
Floyd Medical Center has agreed to contract out its in-patient physical rehabilitation unit to St. Louis-based RehabCare Corp.
FMC President Kurt Stuenkel said the nature of in-patient rehab has changed a lot along with regulations in recent years.
“The competitive marketplace is such that we thought we would be better served by having a company such as RehabCare come in and manage it,” Stuenkel said. “We know them well. We originally did the Specialty Hospital deal with RehabCare. Of course it’s now Kindred Hospital, because RehabCare Corp. was acquired by Kindred Healthcare.”
FMC Vice President Greg Polley said RehabCare has more than 400 sites all across the country.
“They have a lot of expertise in systems documentation, outreach, training programs; they just have resources doing this nationally that we don’t have as a stand-alone, acute-care hospital,” Polley said.
FMC operates an 18-bed in-patient re- hab unit on the sixth floor of the medical center. It employs approximately 60 people. The average length of stay in the inpatient rehab unit is 15 days.
Patients need to be able to cope with a minimum of three hours of therapy a day to qualify for the unit.
“They have to have certain diagnoses in order to qualify,” Polley said.
Some of those diagnoses include traumatic brain injury, stroke, joint replacement, congenital deformities and several others.
Patients are able to get a variety of physical and occupational therapies, as well as speech and language pathology in the unit.
Most of the 60 members of the in-patient rehab staff will remain FMC employees, however, approximately five employees will transition to the RehabCare system.
The director, intake personnel, a social worker, secretary and medical director are all expected to have an opportunity to interview with RehabCare to maintain their current positions.
The change is expected to formally take place by Dec. 1, 2013, according to Stuenkel. He said a number of operating details have yet to be ironed out.