New & Expanded Services Offered at BaylorScott & White in Garland

The services offered on the Baylor Medical Center at Garland campus will be expanded when Select Medical, opens the doors of a new long-term acute care hospital (LTACH) on Baylor Garland’s third floor this fall. The LTACH, which treats medically complex and critically ill patients, will be wholly owned by Select Medical and operated as a hospital-within-a-hospital.

The concept reflects a new model of care for hospitals in a rapidly changing health care landscape. It allows hospitals to better serve communities by collaborating with other health care providers to provide access to a wider range of patient care services. And it’s a concept Baylor Garland plans to further in January 2015 when Timberlawn Mental Health System, a Universal Health Services (UHS) facility, will open a UHS-owned and operated hospital-within-a-hospital psychiatric facility on Baylor Garland’s campus.

“Working with established, highly respected providers like Select Medical and UHS to give members of our community access to a wider range of specialized health services is critical to our mission and to effectively meeting the future health care needs of the people we serve,” says Tom Trenary, president of Baylor Garland.

Although both Select Medical and UHS will wholly own and operate their respective facilities on the Baylor Garland campus, many of the physicians providing care will be members of Baylor Scott & White Quality Alliance (BSWQA).** BSWQA is a clinically integrated accountable care organization, consisting of physicians, hospitals, post-acute care facilities, and other care providers who work together toward improving quality and access to care while simultaneously reducing costs for the patients and communities served by Baylor Scott & White Health facilities.

Incorporating BSWQA members into the care environment adds to the novelty of the hospital-within-a-hospital strategy, and will help promote consistent, quality care practices across a patient’s stay on the Baylor Garland campus.

Select Medical’s new LTACH will treat patients whose complex medical condition  may require a much longer length of stay than those patients treated in a traditional acute care hospital setting. The facility will consist of 40 patient rooms, including a six-room intensive care unit (ICU) for its most critically ill patients. The LTACH’s rooms can support a ventilator, and the ICU rooms can care for more critically-ill patients after their hospital stay, allowing patients to begin their path to recovery more quickly.

Renovations are also underway at Baylor Garland in preparation for the UHS 72-bed facility opening at the beginning of 2015. The UHS hospital will focus on providing quality adult and geriatric inpatient psychiatric services.

“Advanced technologies, shorter lengths of stay and the outpatient-migration of what has traditionally been inpatient procedures and treatments has reduced the amount of time patients spend in hospitals nationwide. This presents us with an opportunity to consolidate additional patient care services within our existing campuses,” explains Trenary.

Trenary says that Baylor Garland will continue to offer a full complement of health care services to adults of all ages, and that the additional services offered by UHS and Select simply allow the hospital, which celebrated its 50th anniversary this year, to expand the continuum of care available to the communities that it serves.