Kindred Hospital Dayton
What: Long-term acute care hospital treating patients with complex medical conditions needing extended hospital stays
Where: 707 S. Edwin C. Moses Blvd., Dayton
Phone: (937) 331-9265
Chief Executive Officer: Lynn Schoen
Website: www.khdayton.com
Employees: More than 200
Now that Kindred Hospital Dayton completed its move to a new hospital building, the long-term acute care hospital is expanding service offerings and adding new health services it had to buy before because of limited space.
Kindred Dayton moved the end of September last year from two floors of rented space to a new freestanding hospital building about four times the size. Previously, Kindred leased about 35,000 square feet at Elizabeth Place. It bought the former Dayton Heart Hospital, which has three floors and 132,000 square feet.
Before, Kindred had to purchase services such as surgeries, laboratory test processing, radiology and food service because there wasn’t room to grow, said Chief Executive Officer Lynn Schoen.
The total investment in downtown, including the property’s $16 million purchase price, has exceeded $35 million. Kindred is one of two long-term care hospitals in the Dayton market, which both work with hospital systems Kettering Health Network and Premier Health Partners.
“As a building within another building, you are so limited to the services you can provide your patients. Even putting in a chapel, even having food service, even being able to have our rooms be big enough to have … sleeping beds for the families in every room, those are things we just couldn’t do,” Schoen said during a tour of the renovated hospital.
“We’re in a position now with the services that we can provide that we can meet the needs of the population that we serve and do so within the walls of our building,” said Schoen, who became CEO in 2010. “Anytime you’re depending on someone else, you put yourself as an organization at risk.”
As a long-term care facility, Kindred serves medically complex patients needing extended hospital stays. The hospital has an average 75 percent occupancy rate, with an average patient stay of 29 days.
The Dayton hospital is licensed for 67 long-term acute care beds. Of that number, Kindred increased its intensive care beds from eight to 12. Eight beds designated for bariatric patients up to 750 pounds were added with lift systems, walking harnesses and bigger beds. Two bariatric patient rooms are intensive care.
Kindred is in the process of adding two surgical suites and an outpatient wound care clinic. It opened and is collaborating with Wright State University on a learning lab for student and staff training.
Kindred hopes to open surgery services by the end of March to do general operations such as orthopedics, amputations and skin grafts.
Adding surgery services helps prevent patients from bouncing back to short-term acute care hospitals — such as Kettering Medical Center and Miami Valley Hospital, which short-term hospitals are penalized.
The outpatient wound clinic should open within six months. The clinic will treat people who can come to the hospital for regular treatments after they leave Kindred.
Two hyperbaric chambers — a chamber that delivers pure oxygen — will open in the wound clinic. Pure oxygen heals wounds faster.
Plans to add a subacute care unit with 34 skilled nursing beds have been delayed because of “the lack of availability of skilled beds for purchase in Montgomery County,” Schoen said.
Ohio has had a moratorium in effect on new nursing home beds since 1995, according to the Ohio Department of Health.
Services Kindred already had, such as a rehabilitation gym, dialysis, radiology and laboratory services, all expanded in the new building. The lab now is full-service with a blood bank and microbiology.
“Expanding rehab was really important. Our patients have been in the bed so long, so getting them up, getting them moving is critical to getting them off of a ventilator, to getting their psyche in a well-mode as opposed to ‘I’m sick’ mode,” Schoen said.
The expansion has grown Kindred to more than 200 employees in addition to 100 credentialed medical staff.
Kindred competes locally only with LifeCare Hospitals of Dayton, in Miamisburg, which has 44 licensed beds. Demand for long-term care beds will increase in the community, Bryan Bucklew, president and CEO of Greater Dayton Area Hospital Association, previously told Dayton Daily.
Kindred Dayton is owned by Louisville, Ky.-based Kindred Healthcare Inc. The Dayton hospital opened in 2004.
Good Samaritan, of Premier Health Partners, bought the former Dayton Heart Hospital in 2008. The heart hospital closed in 2009, and moved to Good Samaritan Hospital in a new heart and vascular center. Then in 2011, Kindred Dayton bought the hospital from Good Samaritan for approximately $16 million.
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