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Select Specialty Hospital May Reach Full
Capacity at Omaha Facility this Fall
Midlands Business Journal, Kristin Durbin, July 25, 2008 - Select Specialty Hospital’s new
52-bed facility at 1870 S. 75th St. in Omaha opened June 24 and has reached about 50
percent capacity primarily serving critically ill patients with medically complex cases.
Tom Theroult, chief executive officer of Select Specialty Hospital, said the facility could
reach capacity by fall and have 220 to 250 employees when that occurs.
The hospital has 340 physicians on staff, 24 of whom signed up in the past two weeks,
Theroult said.
“We have physicians from the University, Methodist, the Alegent system and Creighton,
so we are specialized in the type of patients we treat, and we draw from all the expertise
in town to work with those patients,” he said.
Antonio Saqueton, chief medical officer, said the hospital has made it a priority to give
privileges to primary care physicians and specialists with the requisite credentials and
background to practice at the campus.
“We deal with a lot of medically complex patients,” Saqueton said. Select has the capacity
to treat patients needing a level of services beyond that provided by skilled nurse services
and home care — closer to what is provided in intensive care units, he said. Patients may
be preparing to have surgery or a transplant or return to Select following procedures,
for example.
Select Specialty Hospital, which opened in 1999 within Midlands Hospital, has consistently
grown because of the need for its services as part of a continuum of care, Theroult said.
It began leasing space through Alegent at Immanuel Hospital in 2003.
The hospital treats patients particularly as the capacity of ICUs is stretched by the flow of
patients arriving at emergency rooms in Omaha and surrounding communities, he said.
Patients who have chronic illnesses and diseases are increasing as the population is aging,
Theroult said.
The hospital’s new freestanding facility provides private rooms for the benefit of families
and to better deal with infections, he said.
“Infections these days are much more severe than infections in the past,” Theroult said.
“Patients are sicker today when they come into the hospital.
“That was really a driving force to have our own facility and make those private rooms
suitable to what we do.”
The average length of stay of patients at Select Specialty Hospital is 25 days, but
essentially patients are discharged as they reach their health goals, he said.
“We have had patients come in to us that have been on a ventilator for 60 days someplace
else, and we wean them off the ventilator in a week,” Theroult said.
Variables like immobility, morbid obesity and malnutrition are reasons that patients
require the care Select provides, Saqueton said. For instance, a patient with pressure
ulcers requires wound care treatment, and patients with bone infections require
prolonged antibiotics, he said.
“Hopefully, a year from now the other hospitals in town are asking us to see patients
while they are in the ICU still,” Saqueton said. “With that closer communication with
their ICU and our liaison and clinical staff, we can make a more seamless transition of
patients from the acute care hospitals to Select Specialty Care.”
Saqueton said it was the firsthand experience he had with the hospital that led him to
become the chief medical officer. One of his patients, who was in a coma after a stroke,
received treatment at Select, came out of her coma in about two weeks and started a
rehabilitation program at Select.
“She transferred to Immanuel’s acute rehab, and she actually went home,” Saqueton said.
Saqueton, a family physician, teaches at UNMC and Creighton.
Theroult joined Select Specialty Hospital in Omaha in 2000. He previously worked in
long-term acute care in Minneapolis.
In addition to private rooms, the new Select facility has eight high-observation beds,
dedicated therapy space, telemetry monitoring vital signs, bedside dialysis and special
procedure rooms. Select has about 140 employees.
Select Medical Corp. is a Pennsylvania-based firm operating 88 long-term acute care
hospitals, four medical rehabilitation hospitals and about 1,000 outpatient rehabilitation
clinics in 25 states.
