While Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center currently serves nearly 140 COVID-19 patients, the adjacent rehabilitation hospital is not seeing any spike.
At Dodd Rehabilitation Hospital, recovering coronavirus patients are able to receive three hours a day of intensive respiratory, speech, occupational or other therapies.
Dr. Brian McMichael, medical director at Dodd Rehabilitation Hospital, says only four patients have transferred to Dodd. Two have already gone home.
McMichael credits Ohio's success in "flattening the curve," reducing the potential boom in coronavirus cases. As of Friday, Ohio has seen 3,052 people hospitalized for COVID-19, including 920 ICU admissions, according to the Department of Health.
“The surge peak has kind of become almost like a speed bump,” McMichael says. “It’s fairly flat. And it is not as severe on a daily case basis, nor even cumulatively it has not been as severe as we had feared.”
McMichael says some other COVID-19 patients leaving the Wexner Medical Center have transferred to a skilled nursing facility, because they are not ready for intensive rehab. McMichael adds Dodd requires recovering patients also to test negative for the virus, and that can take several days.
“They’re just sort of in this sort of limbo of needing rehab but not being able to get intensive rehab because they haven’t cleared the virus yet,” McMichael says.
