With a slowdown in patients and a new facility opening in Greenwood, Johnson Memorial Health is closing an inpatient rehabilitation unit at its Franklin campus.
This month, the acute rehabilitation unit, which had room for 14 patients, was closed after the last patient was discharged.
The unit, which provided intensive rehabilitation for patients who had suffered a stroke or orthopedic injury, had employed eight people. All have been able to find jobs within Johnson Memorial Health or elsewhere, president and chief executive officer Larry Heydon said.
Closing the unit was a business decision based on a number of factors, including a drop in patients in recent years, the push by insurance companies and Medicare and Medicaid to have patients get treatment at home or at an outpatient center and a new rehabilitation hospital opening in Greenwood that is a partnership between Kindred Healthcare and Community Health Network, Heydon said.
Johnson Memorial first opened the rehabilitation unit in 2005, and would routinely have 10 or more patients staying at a time and often staying for about 14 days. But in the last few years, the average has been four patients, Heydon said.
Many of those referrals came from Community Health Network. But last year, Community partnered with Kindred on a 40-bed inpatient rehabilitation hospital in Greenwood, Community Rehabilitation Hospital South, which is planned to open in August. With that new facility opening, officials expected to lose those referrals and see a further drop in the number of patients, Heydon said.
At the same time, insurance companies and government programs are both trying to move away from inpatient rehabilitation units by encouraging their patients to use at-home or outpatient services, which are less costly. At the same time, new requirements have been set for rehabilitation units and 75 percent of the patients admitted now have to meet a short list of required diagnoses, Heydon said.
Heydon called the closure disappointing, and said it goes against their mission to keep care local.
“This was a unit that served a regional need, we were able to get referrals out of Indianapolis and allow that care to be kept local,” Heydon said.
But Johnson Memorial does have both outpatient and home health care services for patients who need intensive rehabilitation, he said.
Hospital officials are discussing how to use the 8,000-square-foot space left vacant after closing the unit. For now, with construction of a new emergency department and outpatient services building at the main campus, the area could easily be used by staff who have had to move out of their former space while work is going on, he said.
But they do want to find a long-term use for the space. One option is a geriatric psych unit, which could have room for 10 to 14 patients, he said. Their hope is to have more detailed plans in the next year, he said.
