Laguna Honda Receives Grant To Help Train Personnel on New Discharge Policies
Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco will begin retraining its staff to discharge "more able" patients into community-based treatment programs using a $50,000 grant from the California HealthCare Foundation, the San Francisco Examiner reports (Hampton, San Francisco Examiner, 2/11). Laguna Honda is San Francisco's public long-term care facility (California Healthline, 7/23/04).
The grant will help hospital administrators expand treatment protocols for rehabilitation patients to an additional 28-bed ward. The hospital currently operates a 20-bed rehab unit and maintains four other rehab beds in two other wards. In 2007, Laguna Honda will move to a new facility with a 60-bed rehab unit.
According to the Examiner, the grant-funded program will focus on care plans for the uninsured and low-income and homeless patients, including minority residents and people with HIV/AIDS, mental illnesses or substance abuse problems.
Mivic Hirosoe, co-director of nursing at Laguna Honda, said that the program would address patients who need skilled nursing services and does not indicate a change in hospital policy (San Francisco Examiner, 2/11).
