Fairview Park cuts ribbon on expanded rehab floor

Fairview Park Hospital officials held a ribbon cutting Monday to celebrate the expansion of its fifth-floor rehabilitation unit, which will enable them to hold more patients and bring in more staff. 

The entire fifth floor of the hospital is now the rehabilitation unit, expanding from 15 beds to 20 beds. This $660,000 investment, which includes renovated walk-in showers in all patient rooms, also created new jobs for an estimated 12 staff members.

The floor now has two gyms – occupational therapy and physical therapy instead of one. Fairview Park’s Rehab unit recently received the Joint Commission Stoke Rehabilitation Certificate of Distinction for 2024-2025.

“This has been a great team effort,” said Don Avery, president and chief executive officer. “I’m proud of you all.” 

Avery recalled how the fifth floor was unused when he first got to Fairview. Eventually they had a ribbon cutting there  for the pediatric floor 15 years ago.

“This floor has had a lot of ribbon cuttings,” Avery said. “We then combined pediatric and women’s on second floor and that opened this up to be rehab.”

The five additional beds will make a difference.

“This area is usually completely full,” said Ross Kemp, FPH chief operating officer. “We’ve been at capacity. We have actually had patients who are not able to come back home, so adding these five beds means that folks who have been in accidents, and we’re full, have had to go to Savannah or Jacksonville, Florida. or all of these other places. Now they have a place to come back and rehabilitate here near their home and family.”

Which is very important, said Austin Guinn, director of rehabilitation services. Fairview Park has had to send local patients going through a trauma to other hospitals in order for them to be worked on and stabilized. 

“They walk out of here on a walker, and they come back and they are walking around like normal,” he said. “They maybe were involved in a major car accident or had a stroke. We have seen them at their worse and we get to see them come back and give thanks to the therapist and nursing staff who took care of them. It means a lot.”

“We’d love to be able to bring them home,” Guinn said. “It lessens the caregiver’s burden. Their family members aren’t on the road all of the time, and we’d love to bring Laurens County people back home to receive their rehab. I know five beds doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s a 25 percent overall growth for us, so it is a lot. We’re very, very excited to bring that many more patients here to our rehab.” 

Three patient rooms were turned into the new occupational therapy (OT) gym.

“We have opened it up and renovated it completely,” Guinn said. “We do a lot of stroke rehabilitation with OT and PT (physical therapy). They were all sharing space before. We are required to have a certain amount of gym space and different multipurpose space per person. We are definitely over that now with this much needed space. We were right on the edge of cutting it close, but this new space will allow us to be operational with 20 patients on this floor. We are very excited and can’t wait to fill it up and get more patients here in order to serve the community to higher capacity.”

The added gyms and space will allow Fairview Park to bring hope to people who are going through tough times. Many patients have been turned away in the past because the rehab unit did not have enough beds.

“We are the most intense level of rehab you can go to,” Guinn said. “We are the only one outside of Macon. We serve a pretty big area, so I think it means a lot to the community.”

Guinn likes to see patients visit after they left from their care.