Specialty Hospitals of New Jersey Foundation, Kimball Acute Care Open House

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Violeta Peters
Chief Executive Officer of Specialty Hospitals
732-923-5037

SPECIALTY HOSPITAL AT KIMBALL CELEBRATES ONE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY AS OCEAN COUNTY’S FIRST LONG TERM ACUTE CARE FACILITY

LAKEWOOD, NJ, May 18, 2006 — Specialty Hospital at Kimball, Ocean County’s first hospital-within-a-hospital facility for extended care, recently observed its one-year anniversary with an open house celebration.

AcuteCare Health System (ACHS) hosted the event at Specialty Hospital at Kimball, located within Kimball Medical Center, Lakewood, where tours were given of the 25-bed facility — a state licensed, long term acute care hospital (LTACH) that provides an intensive level of care to patients with complex medical conditions.

Recognized as the region’s leading independent provider of hospital-based, long term acute care services, Lakewood-based ACHS also operates Specialty Hospital at Monmouth, located within Monmouth Medical Center, Long Branch.

Specialty Hospital at Kimball executive director Hilary Michaels, center, is joined by other staff members at the one-year anniversary celebration of the Lakewood-based long term acute care facility. Pictured, from left, are case manager Patricia Gaughran, social worker Debra Foley, respiratory therapist David Orloff, office manager Phyllis Imfield and clinical director LeeAnn Harmon.

Since its opening last spring, Specialty Hospital at Kimball has admitted 165 critically ill patients, according to Hilary Michaels, executive director. “While most patients are from New Jersey, some have come from our neighboring states of Pennsylvania and New York, and as far away as Cape Cod, Mass,” she adds.

AcuteCare Health System CEO Violeta Peters credits Specialty Hospitals’ success in improving patient outcomes to its high nurse-to-patient ratio — one licensed professional to every four patients. “Our caregivers get to know our patients and their family members over their extended hospital stay,” she says. “We are committed to providing every patient with the hospital-based care they deserve, at the level they need, for as long as they need it.”

The open house also featured a memorial dedication of the hospital’s family room to the late Arlene Rothenberg, a former patient whose family and friends have made donations in her honor to Specialty Hospitals of New Jersey Foundation Inc. An affiliate of ACHS, the foundation provides charitable, educational and scientific support to Specialty Hospitals.

Rothenberg, a longtime resident of West Orange, was a registered pharmacist who had been employed at St. Mary’s Hospital and West Essex General Hospital. She also was a children’s advocate who lobbied in Trenton for school bus safety and anti-drug programs, and served as co-chair of the West Orange Municipal Alliance, an officer of the state Parent-Teacher Association and as president of the West Orange P.T.A. Rothenberg died at Specialty Hospital at Kimball in June 2005 at age 68.

Both Specialty Hospitals are uniquely designed to offer long term acute care to patients who require an extended hospital stay of 25 days or more, and have one or more diagnoses that may include cardiovascular or cardiopulmonary disease, cancer, stroke, respiratory or kidney disorders, as well as complex health problems that require advanced wound care.

To meet the comprehensive medical needs of all patients, each Specialty Hospital offers the benefits of a more individualized hospital setting, combined with such life-support services as ventilator weaning, complex wound care, parenteral nutrition, respiratory and cardiac monitoring, and dialysis.

In recent years, LTACHs have been emerging as an effective option to fill the widening gap between two levels of care — short-term acute care hospitals, where the average length-of-stay is seven days, and other discharge placement options, including subacute care nursing facilities, which may lack the services needed to adequately care for patients with medically complex conditions.

AcuteCare Health System, LLC, is a privately owned corporation formed in 2002 to establish and manage long term acute care hospitals (LTACHs). An LTACH (pronounced L-tack) provides diagnostic and medical treatment and rehabilitation to patients whose conditions are medically complex and require an average length-of-stay of 25 days or more.

Although ACHS’s Specialty Hospital at Monmouth and Specialty Hospital at Kimball are located within major medical centers, they are independent entities that offer the benefits of a smaller, more individualized hospital setting, combined with such life-support services as ventilator weaning, complex wound care, parenteral nutrition, respiratory and cardiac monitoring, and dialysis.

Patients typically are referred to the Specialty Hospitals through physician, nurse, case manager or social worker referral — from an intensive care unit.

For more information about Specialty Hospital at Monmouth, call 732-923-5037, and Specialty Hospital at Kimball, call 732-942-3597. Visit its Web site at www.acutecarehs.com.