CarePartners Inpatient Rehabilitation in Asheville, NC, has temporarily closed and transferred residents to alternate facilities, thanks to extended water outages and other damage stemming from Hurricane Helene.
Overall, more than more than 50 CarePartners rehab and long-term acute care patients and 250 employees have been dislodged by ongoing problems from the hurricane that hit more than two weeks ago. They join a long list of long-term care communities in the Southeast that have had to abruptly pivot during the last few weeks due to hurricanes, tornadoes and associated damage.
CarePartners, along with two other Mission Health-owned facilities, Mission Hospital and Asheville Specialty Hospital, have transported patients patients to outlying skilled nursing facilities, home caregivers, and other healthcare centers, one of them at least an hour’s drive away, according to published reports. CarePartners offers rehab, home health, hospice and adult care services.
Provider leaders have worked to regain some sense of normalcy. But progress has been slow. Western North Carolina was especially hard hit.
For nearly two weeks, CarePartners’ water supply has been provided with the help of 40 tanker trucks, which has pumped water from Mission Hospital to pressurize the facility’s water system.
The much needed patch has delivered only a bit of ease.
“While we have implemented contingency plans to make sure water and electricity are available in our hospitals, the lack of water supplied by the city (municipal water) is our biggest concern as we move forward,” Nancy Lindell, Mission Health division director of public and media relations told the local ABC news station.
Provider officials called the moves not unusual for a post-disaster period.
“It provides relief for our caregivers, who have been working around the clock in the wake of the storm,” Lindell said. “Patients and their families are involved in the decision-making process and are being contacted directly if impacted.”
The “routine patient movement” is also meant to allow better attention to more urgent medical needs in the area, including for trauma, stroke and cardiovascular patients as rescue efforts in the largely rural area continue.
All other CarePartners services, including home health, PACE and outpatient rehabilitation have remained open at Mission.
After Helene roared through a handful of Southeastern states the last week of September, Florida took the full brunt of Hurricane Milton last week. In the wake of Helene, which wound up more deadly, hundreds of LTC communities across central FL, including dozens of nursing homes, evacuated in mostly successful efforts to escape Milton’s wrath.
