“They literally breathed life into me,” she said.
Dunham was discharged from Jewish Hospital in Cincinnati recovering from pneumonia. Less than two days later, she was admitted to Mercy Hospital for the same condition. After her lungs were stabilized, doctors and nurses started her intensive rehab.
The acute care rehab center — a circular unit in which every room has a window view — compliments the outpatient rehab at Mercy HealthPlex and the inpatient rehab at the hospital, said Dr. Craig Schmidt, regional director of rehabilitation and therapy services.
“The acute rehab unit is the missing link in the middle,” he said. “The acute rehab unit is designed to ... help them get back to normal life as soon as possible.”
Dunham, who lives with her daughters in Loveland and Greenhills, said she had difficulty walking, standing and getting up, but — with the aid of a walker — she’s practically independent.
The acute rehab center readies a patient to resume daily activities such as daily kitchen activities, dining, laundry and personal hygiene.
“Before this unit, if they needed more rehab than we could provide, we would have to send them out of the facility,” Schmidt said. “The goal was to provide it under one umbrella.”
The hospital had been sending eight patients a day to facilities like Drake Center in Cincinnati.
Not all patients would qualify to be prescribed the acute rehab, Schmidt said. Some of the diagnoses that would qualify a patient would be a joint replacement with medical complexities, recovery from a stroke, or recovery from a pulmonary or cardiac procedure.
“The big qualifier is they have to be able to tolerate three hours of rehab five days out of seven,” Schmidt said. “It’s intense.”
Dunham agreed.
“Every day, when I first started, I thought, ‘I just can’t do it.’ They’ll say, let’s try one more time,” she said. “They are very patient. Each day I’d do a little bit more.”
The intense rehab allows patients to recover faster, Schmidt said. Nearly 20 patients have already used the acute rehab facility.
Contact this reporter at (513) 755-5112 or mpitman@coxohio.com.
About the Author
