Amherst, NY (WBEN) Elderwood says the first recovered patient of its dedicated post-acute care unit for COVID-19 patients was discharged to home on Friday.
The female patient was admitted from Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital where she was treated for COVID-19 related illness. She spent less than ten days on the COVID-19 unit at Elderwood at Amherst.
“The entire process went exactly as intended for this patient,” said Paul Shields, DO, medical director for Elderwood at Amherst and a member of Kaleida Health’s COVID-19 task force. “This initiative is exactly what the community needed and Elderwood was the first to step-up and deliver.”
“We are thrilled to play an important part in our community’s response to the COVID-19 health crisis. This was the right thing to do and we had the right people to do it,” said Angela Hauser, administrator for Elderwood at Amherst.
On March 30, officials at Elderwood announced the creation of the region’s first 22-bed unit with special isolation and infection control processes to begin easing the burden on local acute care facilities. Since that time, Elderwood says it completed the necessary modifications to the facility and began admitting patients in a process-driven manner to ensure that spread of the virus would be mitigated. Currently, there are 15 patients on the 22-bed unit with new admissions nearly every day.
