By Mary-Justine Lanyon
So, you’ve just had surgery – perhaps a knee replacement. You no longer need acute hospitalization but you’re not ready to go home.
What do you do?
Enter the swing bed program at Mountains Community Health.
Hov Yeghiyan, the case manager for the program, spoke to both the Lake Arrowhead Mountain Sunrise Club and the Crest Forest Seniors Citizens Club about the program.
The focus, he said, is on the safe discharge of the patient, who no longer needs acute hospital care but is not strong enough to go home. “We offer rehab close to home,” he noted. Some patients have suffered falls, others strokes or pneumonia.
While in the swing bed program, the patients have access to physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy – right there at the hospital.
Why choose this program at MCH? “We offer personalized care,” Yeghiyan said. “We don’t do numbers. It’s individual care.” There are 17 beds in the program.
There are, he noted, multiple benefits for being in the swing bed program at MCH. The patient is in a familiar environment, closer to home and loved ones. “It’s a great benefit for family members so they don’t have to commute up and down the hill.”
In addition to the therapy services, there is a physician on the premises 24/7. There is the lab and radiology, a social worker and a dietitian. That, Yeghiyan said, “is not true of skilled nursing facilities down the hill.”
Once the team determines the patient can safely go home, they send them with any necessary equipment. “We have a very low readmission rate,” Yeghiyan said. “We make sure the patient is ready to return home.”
Why “swing?” The patient, he said, “is swinging from acute care to rehab.” They actually may stay in the same room, the same bed if they are already at MCH.
The swing bed program, added CEO Mark Turner, “only applies to rural hospitals.” And Turner added that a patient in a hospital down the hill can request to be transferred to the swing bed program at MCH.
Yeghiyan said they have developed good working relationships with those down-the-hill hospitals. However, some may not be aware of the MCH program so the patient has to advocate for themselves.
For more information on MCH and the swing bed program, visit mchcares.com.
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