ORCHARD PARK (WBEN) - Catholic Health has partnered with the McGuire Group to reopen the former AbsolutCare nursing home in Orchard Park to dedicate the facility as a Covid-19 continuing care center.
"We are opening an 80-bed facility for Covid-positive patients that need to get discharged out of the hospital but are not well enough to back out into the community, whether the community be their home or a nursing home," said Joyce Markiewicz, Executive Vice President for Catholic Health. "We're going to care for them here so that we can make some more beds available within the acute care hospitals and bring them here for care."
Markiewicz also added that this facility will not simply be for older patients.
"You could have someone, for example, that is a young person that was in the ICU and maybe on a ventilator, and they've just become very debilitated from being so sick, and we will bring them here, and they can do part of their recovery here," she said. "We'll offer not only nursing care, but we'll also be offering therapy as well to try to get them back on their feet."
The former AbsolutCare center went out of business in November of last year, so Catholic Health and the McGuire Group knew the buildings existed and could be a potential site. Both organizations came in a couple of weeks ago to scope out the buildings, and the process really began rolling from there.