Inside our warm, home-like (yet highly specialized rehabilitation) Fresno CareMeridian facility, we’re proudly caring for some of our country’s veterans.
About one year ago, the Veteran’s Administration contacted us to assist them in caring for some of their most medically complex veteran patients. We of course welcomed this opportunity to serve with open arms. Plus, it made such perfect sense.
The VA approached us because CareMeridian has in place the knowledge and high quality medical care programs for the very specialized care that their brain injury, spinal cord injury, tracheotomy, and ventilator-dependant patients require.
The VA is treating more than 200,000 patients from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq alone. Many of these are brain-injured – a class of injury about which the VA is admittedly struggling to become more knowledgeable. CareMeridian has a long history of exactly the type of specialized, long-term care such catastrophically injured patients require.
The VA hospitals are top-notch in acute care. They also excel at all aspects of limb injuries, rehabilitation and prosthetics. This is because, until very recently, these have been a major source of injury for vets. The VA over the years has perfected their ability to provide these types of treatments. But today, with the impressive advances in immediate post-injury and acute care, soldiers are surviving injuries they may not have just a few years ago – and that can mean some soldiers require very specialized long-term care that the VA is now working hard to be able to provide on a broader basis.
In working with the VA on our partnership, it became clear that even though we provide this care in small, highly staffed (4-1 patient to care-giver ratio), 12-bed facilities for personalized care, CareMeridian was able to deliver these services at about ½ the cost that the VA could provide them.
All in all, this means better care for our vets – and for their families. Certainly our entire focus on caring for such specialized needs in an intimate environment - that allows for including the family in the care day-to-day - is a primary benefit. But, because families may also be faced with certain co-insurance payments, our cost-effective care means their co-payments are less as well. And by placing the appropriate patients within our skilled facilities, the VA in turn has more beds at their facilities to allow for better care for other veteran patients.
We’re proud to be supporting the VA in their efforts by currently providing two types of services for our vets. We’re caring for those that require round-the-clock skilled nursing, such as IV, tracheotomy, ventilator and other catastrophic injury therapies; as well as those needing neuro-behavioral therapies, community integration, and caregiver training.
CareMeridian stands ready to support our troops in our own, very unique way.
I think our vets are grossly underappreciated...it's fantastic to see them getting taken care of
Posted by: Erica | April 25, 2008 at 06:40 AM