FARMINGTON – A Farmington hospital is seeking a state license for 10 short-term skilled beds for patients in its service area.

The license would allow Franklin Memorial Hospital to provide skilled rehabilitation care to patients with medically complex conditions and be reimbursed for it.

It would also give the hospital’s patients and families another option of care in the local community rather than traveling to Portland or Boston, spokesman Dan Marois said.

These beds, which are estimated to cost $15,000 each for a license, would be used to provide care that isn’t currently available through other providers, Marois said.

It would also return some of the 63 beds that were lost to the area when Parkview Nursing and Rehabilitation Center of Livermore Falls closed in 2002, he said.

Marois acknowledged that the hospital’s proposal has hit some opposition with nursing homes.

But he said that right now, the hospital has certain patients who aren’t accepted at local skilled facilities, such as nursing homes, because they cannot meet the patient’s medical needs, Marois said.

‘Swing beds’

For example, a patient who requires long-standing level IV antibiotics may have rehabilitation needs as well, he noted.

“Currently, we only have the choices of keeping the patient in the hospital setting – with no reimbursement for service – or the option of sending them to a facility out of the area that can meet their special need,” Marois said.

“Our request for ‘swing beds’ would allow us to offer the services that local facilities cannot offer because of complexity and high cost, and we would get reimbursed for the service,” he said.

Examples of other conditions that would receive swing bed care are:

• Long-term ventilator patients.

• Patient requiring short-term, generally three to five days, end-of-life care.

• Patients awaiting placement at a long-term rehabilitation facility.

dperry@sunjournal.com

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