Valley West Hospital helping patients return home faster

Sandwich resident Susan White is grateful for Northwestern Medicine Valley West Hospital in Sandwich and its Homeward Healing Swing Bed Program.

She was in the swing bed program twice last fall after first recovering from surgery and then from a heart attack. The inpatient program is for people who need short-term, skilled health care services after an acute stay in the hospital.

Instead of going directly home or to a skilled nursing facility, patients remain at or can be transferred to Valley West Hospital for additional care that is not easily provided in the home.

“It is a wonderful program,” White said. “The nurses and everyone are very good at taking care of you. They check to see what you need and if there is anything you want to do differently.”

She added that patients do not have to wait long for help.

“There’s always someone there to help you with whatever you need to do,” White said. “They bring in the physical therapist and she takes care of you and gives you the therapy that you need specifically for your particular problem. I was in a lot of hospitals last year and I think that one is one of the best.”

White was part of a celebration in March at the hospital celebrating the fifth anniversary of the Homeward Healing Swing Bed Program.

Valley West Hospital is designated as a critical access hospital that has 25 beds. Critical access hospitals are the only hospitals that have what’s called a swing bed program.

“In rural settings, we know that access to care is very hard,” said Ashley Brown, patient care manager at the hospital. “So if they need more physical therapy or they need wound care that might take a little bit longer or Intravenous antibiotics that might take a little bit longer, we are that bridge program that can allow them to remain in a hospital setting but as a rehab patient rather than going to a skilled nursing facility or a nursing home to do that rehab.”

The average length of stay for patients in swing beds is significantly lower than that of stand-alone skilled nursing facilities.

“We are able to turn them around and get them home safely in about half the time than if they went to a nursing home for the same kind of rehab,” Brown said. “We can provide the services more frequently throughout the day. So they might only get one chance for rehab per day at the skilled nursing facility. Here they can get it two or three times. The care is a little more condensed and we can move them through their rehab a little faster.”

The goal is to get them home in less than three weeks time.

“We have had patients stay a little big longer,” she said. “Most of our patients are out of our program within 11 days. That is our running mark right now. At an alternate facility, they run about 26 days to complete the rehab part.”

Valley West Hospital is the only critical access hospital in Northwestern Medicine’s system.

“We’re the only one within our hospital system that can provide this service,” Brown said. “So we’re very unique.”

More than 250 patients have gone through the Homeward Healing Swing Bed Program since its inception. The program has proven successful for the majority of patients.

“Eighty percent of them are able to make it home safely and continue on with their lives rather than having to go to a nursing home or some other alternate location,” Brown said. “So we were able to take our community members and get them better and get them home, which is always the healthcare worker’s goal.”

The goal of the program is to get the patients back to a condition where they can return home safely and not have to go back to the hospital.

“Our goal is not to have repeat patients,” Brown said. “We’ve seen a handful of repeat patients, but that’s usually because they’ve had another surgery months or years later.”

Brown is a 2002 Sandwich High School graduate and has been working at Valley West Hospital since 2019. Before that, she worked at Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital in Geneva for almost 14 years.

“My family is here and my family was receiving care in this facility,” she said. “When my mom was receiving care here is when I saw how this facility works and so I took over the position and came back home.”

While at Valley West Hospital, Brown has seen her fair share of people she knows.

“I love the fact that I’m able to take care of my neighbors, my schoolmates and their children,” she said. ”And then with the swing bed program, I get that sense of comfort that I was able to get that generation home.”

Along with working at the hospital, Brown is taking care of her teenage children and her parents.

“I actually was able to bring my dad after having surgery into the swing bed program and we got him home safely,” she said. “So I can actually attest to the quality of the care and the rehabilitation that we provide because it was impacting my family directly. We do great things here.”

More information about the Homeward Healing Swing Bed Program is available at Northwestern Medicine’s website, nm.org.