BY TEQUILA MINSKY | It’s been five years since the VillageCare Rehabilitation and Nursing Center opened on West Houston St. between Varick St. and Sixth Ave. On Dec. 8 the facility’s on-site staff and administration gathered to mark the anniversary.
During the brief celebratory remarks, Emma DeVito, president and C.E.O. of Village Care, proudly stated, “We have the best reputation. We’ve gotten a five-star rating for five years.”
The center is designed as a place where patients can come for rehabilitative therapy and recovery to prepare them to return home after hospital surgery and other hospital stays. The average stay is from 10 to 20 days. The patients’ average age is in the 70s.
Six stories tall with 105 beds, the rehab and nursing center is the first skilled nursing facility to be newly built in Manhattan in more than a half century. The sale of Village Care’s long-serving Village Nursing Home, at Hudson and 12th Sts., in the mid-2000s to a residential developer helped finance the construction of the new facility.
“We could see the changes in the healthcare model,” DeVito said. “People need rehabilitation and then go home.
“We work closely with the hospital partners,” she added, “and are always at capacity. Eight patients leave every day.”
The center serves 1,500 patients per year.
The ground-floor rehab room is used to capacity for the needed physical strengthening and rehabilitation that takes place.
Amenities include common areas on each floor where patients can socialize with each other and receive visits from friends and family.
Wireless communications — including electronic medical records, wireless staff communications and electronic dietary and patient monitoring — support patient care.
For the fourth straight year, in 2014 U.S. News and World Report named the VillageCare Rehabilitation and Nursing Center one of the nation’s “Best Nursing Homes.”
