Within the next two years a new rehabilitation hospital will be opened in Central Oregon to serve stroke, brain injury and major trauma patients.

Cascade Healthcare Community, parent company of St. Charles Medical Centers in Bend and Redmond, announced Thursday its plans to build a 30-bed, free-standing rehabilitation hospital on its Bend campus.

The $19.9 million project will replace the St. Charles-Bend’s current 12-bed rehab center within the hospital that is filled to capacity, said Jean West, St. Charles service line director for rehabilitation services. Services offered at the new facility, including physical, occupational and speech therapy, will remain the same.

”Currently patients have a longer waiting stay to get into the rehab facility,” West said. ”They may be ready on a certain day and have to stay in the hospital longer. Or, they may have to go home with family members and not have the rehab they need to be more independent.”

As Central Oregon’s population has grown over the past 15 years, the need for the hospital’s rehabilitation services has also risen. West said her program serves patients of all ages but a majority are 65 or older.

”We are the only rehab facility east of the Cascades,” West said. ”We’re trying to be the premiere rehab facility and we’ve underserved our area for a while. It will be nice to catch up with our needs currently and projected into the future.”

Along with intensive inpatient therapy, the new rehab hospital will also house St. Charles’ outpatient rehab services, West said. Through that program the hospital serves geriatric, neurological and pediatric patients.

Dr. Raymond Tien, a neurosurgeon with The Center: Orthopedic and Neurosurgical Care and Research, said the facility is a much-needed addition to medical care in the community.

”I think that’s the piece that has been missing,” Tien said. ”We have all this great technology here. We can do the latest therapies … We are doing these things for people, and they are occupying hospital beds when they don’t need hospital beds, they need intensive rehab treatment.”

”I think it couldn’t come any sooner,” he said. ”It’s going to be great.”

Cascade Healthcare has not yet decided exactly where on the Bend campus the new facility will be built, but it will not be connected to the existing hospital. The hospital group is also undecided on what will replace the current rehab center when the new building is complete, said spokesman Todd Sprague.

The project is not included in Cascade Healthcare’s ongoing $128 million expansion that includes work at the Redmond hospital and an addition to Bend’s family birthing center.

Construction on the rehab hospital is scheduled to begin in 2007 and West said she anticipates the new facility will open in 2008. When it opens, she said, the average daily census will probably be 16 patients, whereas the current facility has an average of 11 patients a day.

Rehab patients typically spend about 11 days in the inpatient rehab facility, West said. Three hours each day is spent on intense therapy and they are under 24-hour certified nursing care.

”People are generally very motivated because they create the goals,” she said. ”They are motivated to achieve those goals before they go home so they will be successful.”

Rehab facility

St. Charles officials said the new facility will offer:

* 30 beds instead of 12

* shorter waiting times

* outpatient neurological, geriatric, pediatric services