Swing Bed Program

Recover Faster, Closer to Home

What is a Swing Bed?

Swing Beds/Transitional Care are dedicated beds for skilled nursing care, allowing patients to continue medical treatment after discharge from an acute care facility. Patients receive professional care, including physical therapy, and are closer to their homes or family during treatment and therapies. The Swing Bed program increases Medicare patient’s access to post-acute skilled nursing facility care and maximizes the efficiency of operations by meeting unpredictable demands for patient care.

Swing Beds offer patients, family members, and care providers a unique opportunity to enhance and strengthen the healing process. Swing Beds allow improvements to the quality of care for patients in rural areas as they can return home for continued treatments:

• Swing Beds allow family and friends to be more closely involved in rehabilitation and recovery.
• Admissions are less traumatic and threatening to patients, which is a psychological and emotional relief.
• Swing Beds allow the patient to return to the community, people, and support systems in which they are comfortable.
• Swing Bed admissions offer hope for each patient’s continued recovery and return to independent and functional living.

How it Works

After an injury or illness requiring hospitalization, it is sometimes necessary to have skilled care or rehabilitation to be ready to return home. Our Swing Bed Program allows you to recover faster, closer to home, and while being cared for by our expert care team in a hospital setting.

Our goal is to maximize your health so you can get back to your life quickly while avoiding unnecessary readmission to the hospital.

What is Covered

• Medicare pays the full cost for the first twenty (20) days.
• Medicare pays 80% between days 21-100, and secondary or supplement will pay 20% ( as long as Medicare continues coverage).
• Other medical insurance may cover your swing bed stay, or a patient may pay with private funds.

Who Qualifies

For Medicare to cover your swing bed stay, specific qualifying medical criteria must be met.

• Minimum three (3) night consecutive hospital stay in last thirty (30) days
• Require either skilled nursing or skilled therapy services

Skilled Rehabilitative Services

• Gait, mobility, and activity evaluation and training
• Therapeutic exercises
• Therapeutic modalities
• Physical therapy evaluation and treatment

Skilled Nursing Services

• Intravenous/Intramuscular injections
• Insertion, irrigation, and replacement of suprapubic catheters (SPC)
• Central venous line/peripheral line (PIV) care and maintenance
• Nasogastric tube, gastrostomy, jejunostomy feedings
• Naso-pharyngeal and tracheotomy aspiration
• Treatment of acute decubitus ulcers
• Bowel and bladder program institution and supervision
• Colostomy /ileostomy care in the early postoperative stage
• Teaching and training activities
• Wound and dressing care

We Are Here to Help

Staff is here to help with your needs. We follow a long tradition of hospital care dating back to 1907. We are a premier facility in Southern Colorado and are here to help with your needs. Rio Grande Hospital offers skilled nursing services, rehabilitation services, and ancillary services to all patients in the Swing Bed Program, including:

• Physical Therapy
• In-house Pharmacy
• Our friendly and skilled doctors and nurses are available 24 hours a Day
• Dietitian available for consult
• Certified Wound Care nurses and physicians on-site
• Dental Services

Contact Us Today!
Grace Sandoval
Care Coordinator
swingbed@riograndehospital.net
Phone: 719-657-3273
Fax: 719-657-4169