Three long-term care and rehabilitation facilities in Vermont will receive $1.4 million from the state over the next three months to bring in enough temporary staff to add 80 beds, to make room for hospital patients who are recovered from COVID-19 enough to be discharged and yet not well enough to go home.
Burlington Health and Rehab Center in Burlington, Mountain View Center in Rutland and St. Albans Healthcare and Rehabilitation are slated to receive the funds.
The state landed on 80 as the number of additional beds needed based on a survey of hospitals to determine how many of their patients were not able to be discharged because of lack of subacute beds, Agency of Human Services Secretary Mike Smith said Tuesday at Gov. Phil Scott’s (R) weekly press conference on the coronaviru pandemic.
“The number came up as 74. We went to 80 just to make sure we had more beds than patients, to have some leeway if there was any growth,” Smith said.
