LifeCare Hospitals of Dayton
What: Long-term acute care hospital for medically complex patients needing extended stays
Where: 4000 Miamisburg-Centerville Road, Miamisburg
Phone: (937) 384-8300
Chief Executive Officer: Russell Dean
Website: www.lifecare-hospitals.com/hospital/dayton
Patients: About 450 patients were admitted in 2012 for a total approximately 13,000 days
The Texas company that owns LifeCare Hospitals of Dayton emerged from bankruptcy in June and is growing, its chief executive said.
LifeCare Dayton is adding three new private patient rooms for a total 42 in a $150,000 project, said Russell Dean, chief executive officer and administrator of the local hospital.
LCI Holdco LLC of Plano, Texas, announced in December it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. As part of the filing, it said an agreement was reached for the company to be acquired by Hospital Acquisition LLC, a group of LifeCare’s lenders.
On June 3, it was announced that Hospital Acquisition completed its purchase of all the assets of LCI Holdco LLC for $320 million and the sale was approved by the federal bankruptcy court.
The new company operates 26 long-term acute care hospitals in nine states.
LifeCare Dayton is located on the campus of Sycamore Medical Center in Miamisburg at 4000 Miamisburg-Centerville Road. It’s a hospital within a hospital. But it operates completely separate from the nonprofit Sycamore and Kettering Health Network, and has its own staff of more than 180 employees.
LifeCare is a private for-profit organization that buys services and rents space from Sycamore, Dean said.
Long-term care hospitals care for the sickest patients, many with serious wounds, living on ventilators and experiencing multiple system failures.
The average length of stay for LifeCare Dayton’s patients is 30 to 35 days.
Short-term acute care hospitals such as Sycamore or Miami Valley Hospital treat patients through a health episode and refer some patients needing extended stays to places like LifeCare Dayton, Dean said.
“A lot of times, especially for short-stay hospitals, there are limits to how long patients can stay,” Dean said. “That’s where we come in. They’re too sick to go to a nursing home or rehab hospital.”
“We are kind of expanding our horizons to work more closely with emergency rooms and nursing homes to help hospitals avoid 30-day hospital readmissions,” he said. Short-term hospitals are penalized under the federal health reform law for patients with certain diseases that are discharged and re-admitted in a 30-day window.
LifeCare’s only hospital competitor in the Dayton market is Kindred Hospital Dayton.
LifeCare Dayton expects to open the new private patient rooms by August. The rooms were built in space previously occupied by the hospital’s pharmacy, which was relocated.
“We can use the extra space. There are a lot of high acuity — a lot of very sick — people who need the services we provide,” Dean said. “The need for long term acute care hospitals will probably continue to grow because we have an aging population.”
At the same time, LifeCare Dayton, which opened in 2000, is in negotiations to renew its lease with Sycamore for five more years. Dean doesn’t anticipate any problems with the lease.
The previous LCI Holdco faced a “significant” and unexpected setback that negatively impacted its finances from the loss of three facilities in the New Orleans area in the 2005 hurricane, according to court documents.
The loss of the Louisiana hospitals, and the revenue and profits those facilities provided, was made worse by federal regulations in 2006 and 2007 that reduced Medicare reimbursement rates for services. Further growth for the company was hurt by a federally imposed moratorium in 2007 on the construction or expansion of LTAC facilities, also according court records.
The moratorium has now expired.
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