MacNeal Hospital in Berwyn opens new Acute Care Rehabilitation Center

BERWYN – Patients in need of intensive rehabilitation following a stroke or other debilitating health condition may not have to travel so far from home after the opening of the nearly $2.6 million Acute Care Rehabilitation Center at MacNeal Hospital in Berwyn.

Chicago-based Reed Construction, the company hired to complete the remodeling project, demolished and rebuilt a portion of the hospital's transitional care unit to make way for the new roughly 11,000-square-foot center, which includes 13 patient rooms, two nurses' stations, an employee break room and a room for secure storage of medications. The space also features a rehabilitation gym and an Activities of Daily Living apartment, an area where patients can hone independent living skills under the supervision of health care professionals, according to a statement from the company.

Construction was completed within seven weeks.

Scott Steiner, CEO of MacNeal Hospital, said the new center was created within the hospital's existing footprint – meaning no new square footage was added to the facility – on the second floor of the north building. Previously, the space served as a transitional care unit for patients with less acute rehabilitation needs, he said. The 40 beds included within the unit were reduced to 25 to make room for the new acute rehabilitation center.

"That's important: keeping costs down and general health care costs down," Steiner said. "We were able to create a state-of-the-art unit without having to find any new space."

Some of the hospital's staff in the transitional care unit were moved to the acute care unit, and six new staff members were hired as a result of the expanded service, he said.

The new center will serve patients with severe rehabilitation needs, most often individuals who have suffered from a stroke and have lost the ability to move around freely, Steiner said.

"This isn't about muscles not being used enough," he said. "This is about an injury because of a stroke or car accident or large surgical procedure."

Prior to the creation of the center at MacNeal, Steiner said patients with acute rehabilitation needs were referred to other hospitals able to accommodate their care needs.

The distances patients needed to travel to receive care "warranted us taking a closer look at it and building and opening [the new acute rehabilitation] unit this year," he said.

The process, which spanned two years from concept to construction, involved discussions with both physicians and the patient community MacNeal serves, Steiner said.

"We wanted to build a unit that would serve the population of the community we directly serve," he said.

The new unit opened Oct. 1, and for the past several weeks, all beds have been full, justifying the need, Steiner said.

When asked why the construction timeline was constricted to a seven-week timeframe, he said completion of the unit needed to occur in line with the hospital's Medicare cost-reporting deadline on Oct. 1. If MacNeal didn't meet the deadline, the hospital would have been prohibited from opening the center for a full year, Steiner said.

Another added benefit of providing an acute rehabilitation center close to home for patients is that their families will be able to visit them while they recover, and the physicians who treated them at the onset of their illness or injury can follow them through the recovery process, he said.

"Patients appreciate that," Steiner said. "That relationship, that trust relationship between patient and physician, is really huge and something we want to do our best to maintain."