New Addition of Service
07-Sep-2012Warren General Hospital Announces New Addition of Service
Warren, PA-August 30, 2012- Warren General Hospital is pleased to announce the addition of the “swing bed” program, a new service that will be offered early this fall at the hospital and will replace the Transitional Care Center.
The swing bed program is available for Medicare patients who have had a relatively uncomplicated and brief hospital visit. The only change for a Medicare patient under a swing bed program is the level of care. As a patient’s medical needs change, the caregivers and medical professionals in charge of the medical care change (or “swing”) respective to the patient’s variation in medical requirements.
Under the swing bed program, a hospital can utilize available beds as needed to provide acute or skilled nursing care to patient who require these services. Federal regulations define a swing bed hospital as a hospital or critical access hospital participating in Medicare that has the approval to provide post-hospital skilled care and meets specific requirements.
The “swing bed program” addresses the gap for discharged patients who still require medical care. As a result of changes and reduction in Medicare reimbursement, many hospitals are being forced to discharge patients as soon as they are no longer medically considered acutely ill. Unfortunately, many of these smaller hospitals do not have access to separate sub-acute facilities.
As part of the switch over to this new service, as of September 18th the Transitional Care Center at WGH will no longer be accepting new patients. The TCC unit will continue to operate serving the existing patients until October 8th. Moving forward in this transition, current and future patients will not be without care. Warren General Hospital will be opening the swing bed program early this fall and swing bed patients will receive the same care as in TCC including rehab to ensure the patient is ready to be discharged.
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