One of only two hospitals in the state that care for patients who are critically and persistently ill plans to close, leaving more than a dozen people with no place to go.
North Valley Hospital in Thornton has notified the state that it will shut down the portion of the hospital known as the “Medicaid hospital backup unit.”
The unit houses 13 patients, many of whom are able to breathe only with a ventilator.
The impending closing has led government agencies to try to develop a relocation plan for the North Valley patients, said Joanne Lindsay, state Department of Health Care Policy and Financing spokeswoman.
Lindsay said her department, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the state health department and the Colorado long-term- care ombudsman have outlined a preliminary plan to relocate the patients.
“No one will be left out in the cold,” she said.
Vibra Healthcare, the Pennsylvania company that operates the hospital, said in a statement Friday that affected patients will be relocated beginning this fall.
The hospital’s remaining 93 beds, which house rehabilitation and geriatric patients, will remain open.
Only one other facility in Colorado is equipped to care for such fragile patients.
That hospital, Westwind Campus of Care in Pueblo, says it is full.
Westwind can take 16 high-care patients – and has a waiting list of 21, said Paula DelPriore, Westwind administrator.
Lindsay said the state is negotiating with a company to take the patients but that arrangements have not been completed.
That leaves Linda Morrissey and her husband, Daryl Johnson, scared and angry.
Morrissey’s 19-year-old son Michael has lived at North Valley for a year.
When Michael was in the womb, his brain failed to divide properly into two lobes. The resulting condition, holoprosencephaly, left Michael unable to walk or talk.
Michael’s body cannot regulate his temperature, and he needs a ventilator to breathe.
Johnson is convinced that Morrissey’s constant care – she visits her son daily – is the reason Mi chael has survived so much longer than doctors predicted.
As much as she loves him, Morrissey said, she cannot imagine bringing Michael home to live.
“I can’t do all his care,” Morrissey said. “I just can’t.”
Nearly constant care
Patients like Michael and the others at North Valley need intense care and almost constant attention.
Since they are not expected to recover enough to live on their own, many hospitals – even long-term-care hospitals – are reluctant to take them.
There are about 400 long-term- care hospitals across the country, said Jennifer Connors of the Washington, D.C.-based Acute Long Term Hospital Association.
The association defines long term as 25 days or more.
Even in these facilities, Connors said, most patients eventually recover enough to leave.
“Usually they are not there for extremely long stays, and usually the hospitals try and have a discharge plan,” Connors said.
Patients like Michael Morrissey, or those who have suffered traumatic brain or spinal-cord injuries, often don’t fit that description, Connors said.
“We try and put most of those people in skilled-nursing facilities,” Connors said of patients who need shorter long-term care.
Demand for the kind of intense, long-term care that North Valley and Westwind provide is growing, said DelPriore.
“We’re getting referrals daily from all over the country,” she said.
Such patients, DelPriore said, require six to eight hours per day of nursing care.
“Real scary”
Medicaid’s hospital-backup- unit program allows hospitals to negotiate with the state for individual reimbursement rates based on each patient’s needs.
“What they allow for us is to cover our costs, nothing else,” DelPriore said.
Vibra vice president Robert J. Sutton did not comment directly on whether cost issues are forcing the company to close North Valley’s care unit.
In an e-mail, Sutton said that when Vibra bought the hospital in 2004, the Medicaid hospital-backup program was already in place.
“We have operated it since, but it is the only such program in our system and is not consistent with our mission,” he said.
Linda Morrissey and Johnson say their mission right now is to find a place for Michael, but they are discouraged.
“I have no idea” where Michael will go when North Valley closes, Morrissey said.
“It’s real scary,” she said, stroking her son’s arm. “This is my life right here.”
Staff writer Karen Augé can be reached at 303-954-1733 or kauge@denverpost.com.
