Regency acute care hospital among Mercy - St. Charles Hospital highlights of 2022

Mercy-St. Charles Hospital
Regency acute care hospital among highlights of 2022
 
By Kelly J. Kaczala
News Editor
kkaczala@presspublications.com
 
        At a recent “State of the Communities” event, Craig Albers, president of Mercy Health-St. Charles Hospital, gave a report on the quality of health care at the hospital in 2022.
        The annual event, sponsored by the Eastern Maumee Bay Chamber of Commerce, was in the Oregon Room at Mercy Health-St. Charles Hospital.
        “We’ve had a very challenging couple of years,” said Albers. The threat of a possible surge in COVID-19 and RSV influenza this winter hadn’t materialized. Both are highly contagious respiratory infections caused by viruses.
        “There was a little bit of it that occurred post holidays – like Thanksgiving and Christmas,” he said, but the numbers were very low.
        “So that’s good news. That part of a potential crisis situation is hopefully behind us as we move forward out of the pandemic,’ he said.
        There are also financial challenges for health care, he said.
        “For those who don’t know how health care works, our reimbursement structure is really driven by the payers - the government, as well as commercial payers. Their reimbursement rates didn’t increase as much as our costs did. So it’s been very challenging for health care systems,” said Albers. “At Mercy Health, we had to make some decisions. We decided to consolidate our OB services to one location. And all of those are at our Level 1 Center at St. Vincent’s Hospital. We still have all our practices open here on the East Side, so there is access. When you think about your maternal care, 95-percent of it is with your office and doctor. All of that is still here for all our patients, and all of our doctors are here to serve you.”
       
Regency
        Albers also talked about Regency Hospital of Oregon, a new 31-bed critical illness recovery facility that officially opened its doors in February on the remodeled fourth and fifth floors of Mercy Health – St. Charles Hospital.
        Described as “a hospital-in-a-hospital,” Regency serves as a satellite hospital of Regency Hospital – Toledo. The critical illness recovery hospital is licensed as a long-term acute care hospital (LTACH). It specializes in helping critically ill patients breathe, speak, eat, walk and think as independently as possible, according to Albers.
        “There’s different levels of health care. You have the acute care hospital, which is usually a short stay for patients to get better. You may not be completely recovered, but you’re getting better. Sometimes there are patients who are really sick and take one or two months to get better. That’s what a long-term acute care hospital is for. So Regency Hospital is leasing space from us, but they are their own hospital. They will be using services from us - lab, dietary, radiology – that type of thing. They have their own staff. So they will be bringing at least 100 employees to the community. They have their own nurses, therapists, and administrative staff. Joint commission surveyors will visit the hospital to evaluate standards of compliance, separate from St. Charles. Patients are usually there for about a month. Their goal is to go home. Sometimes they will need to go to extended care facilities. But the goal for many of those patients is to try and get home.”
        Regency’s parent company, Select Medical, has over 175 similar facilities across the country. “It’s not an unusual concept. In Toledo, it’s a little different because it’s a `hospital-in-a- hospital.’ But it’s common across the country.”
        So far, 2023 “has kicked off in a really good direction,” he said, adding that patient volumes and surgeries have been up. He thanked the public for their support.