Kindred seeing surprising results for first year

Michelle Swafford

Friday, June 17, 2005 | 10:47 a.m.

Kindred Healthcare of Las Vegas is ramping up quicker than company executives expected.

The long-term acute care provider opened its third Las Vegas hospital last fall and is already seeing more patients than was projected for the first year, said Frank Battafarano, president of Kindred's hospitals' division.

Kindred's newest hospital is a 40-bed facility that opened Sept. 27 inside Desert Springs Hospital, which is owned by Universal Health Services Inc. The hospital-within-a-hospital held an open house Wednesday to showcase the facility to the public and formally celebrate the local addition.

"Las Vegas has been a good market for Kindred," Battafarano said. "We started to ramp up by the first of the year. We're ahead of what we thought would be the expectation for the year."

He estimates that Kindred is seeing an average of 25 patients that are admitted for an average of 30 days with "medically complex" cases such as chronic pulmonary disease, severe wound care and rehabilitation.

Kindred Hospital Las Vegas at Desert Springs Hospital has 28 employees and leases space and purchases some services from Desert Springs, which is a short-term acute care hospital.

In Las Vegas, Kindred also operates two other long-term acute care facilities: Kindred Hospital Las Vegas-Sahara and Kindred Hospital Las Vegas-Flamingo. It also owns Torrey Pines Care Center, Las Vegas Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center and Kindred Pharmacy.

Kindred's hospital at 2250 E. Flamingo Road is adding 30 beds to its existing 92 and should complete that expansion later this year, Battafarano said.

Other Kindred expansions and additions are likely for Las Vegas because the population continues to grow and so does demand for long-term acute care services, he said.

He said Kindred is considering building hospitals in the southwest and northwest parts of Las Vegas but has not selected locations yet.

"We're in that evaluation stage," he said. "No decisions have been made if that would be freestanding or a hospital-within-a-hospital."