LifeCare Hospitals
What: Long-term acute care hospital for medically complex patients needing extended stays. LifeCare Hospitals of Dayton is opening a Hamilton campus at Fort Hamilton Hospital, 630 Eaton Ave.
Phone: 937-384-8300
Chief Executive Officer: Russell Dean
Hamilton Chief Operations Officer: Rob Mallicoat
Website: www.lifecare-hospitals.com/hospital/dayton
LifeCare Hospitals, which operates long-term care hospitals for some of the sickest patients, is opening a location at Fort Hamilton Hospital.
Renovation work is expected to begin on patient rooms and office space for the new services next week, said Russell Dean, chief executive officer of LifeCare Hospitals of Dayton, which is opening the Hamilton campus on Eaton Avenue.
The new LifeCare Hospitals of Hamilton, as the affiliated campus will be called, expects to begin accepting patients in late August, Dean said.
LifeCare will be the first long-term care hospital in Butler County, he said.
Patients “no longer have to go to Cincinnati or Dayton to get long-term acute care,” he said.
Seventy-five new jobs will be created in Hamilton and LifeCare has started hiring for pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, respiratory therapists, physical therapists, and nurses, among other positions. Not all 75 positions will be filled come August. Staffing will ramp up as the number of patients grows.
Additionally, LifeCare will invest more than $100,000 in renovations for the Hamilton opening, not including the cost of buying medical equipment, Dean said.
Texas-based LifeCare Hospitals currently owns 24 long-term acute care hospitals in nine states.
Whereas short-term acute care hospitals such as Fort Hamilton, Mercy Health — Fairfield Hospital or West Chester Hospital treat patients through a health episode, long-term care hospitals treat the most medically complex patients. Patients of long-term hospitals often have serious wounds, live on ventilators and are experiencing multiple system failures.
Fort Hamilton and other short-term hospitals will refer patients needing extended inpatient stays to places like LifeCare Hospitals of Hamilton, Dean said.
The average length of stay for LifeCare is 30 to 35 days, he said.
LifeCare operates as a hospital within a hospital. The private, for-profit company is leasing 20 patient rooms and additional floor space from Fort Hamilton and its nonprofit parent health system Kettering Health Network, he said. Officials reached a three-year lease deal with renewal options.
LifeCare will buy radiology and food services from Fort Hamilton. Otherwise, LifeCare operates separately and has its own staff.
“The whole benefit of this is it allows (health providers) to take care of a whole different population without building a new hospital,” Dean said. “We take space that isn’t being used and make a valuable use of the space.”
LifeCare’s next closest location is LifeCare Hospitals of Dayton, located in Miamisburg at another Kettering Health Network hospital — Sycamore Medical Center.
In fact, Fort Hamilton Hospital’s president Mark Smith was previously president of Sycamore Medical Center.
“LifeCare provides exceptional long-term, acute care to patients. I am glad we are able to help LifeCare provide this much-needed service in the City of Hamilton,” Smith said in a provided statement.
Staff Writer Hannah Poturalski contributed to this report.
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