The Carolinas Specialty Hospital had a moving day of sorts. That meant transferring close to thirty acute-care patients from uptown Charlotte to Pineville. They were welcomed with pompoms.
Carolinas Specialty Hospital administrators have been planning for this day a year. Twenty-eight patients were moved from a rented space at the Carolinas Medical Center-Mercy hospital to a brand new building.
Nursing students from the American Academy of Healthcare were on hand waving pom poms to welcome the patients.
Cecelia Carper says it was a smooth ride for her.
"The ambulance people make it as comfortable as, you know, as you can be," Carper says. "We only hit one bump. That's pretty good for Charlotte!"
Carper has been in the hospital since late July after multiple hip surgeries. The pacemaker for her heart went out of sync and then later she had an infection in her lungs. It's been a difficult few months, but she says this location is by far the most comfortable. After all, she has a special air-flow mattress that inflates and deflates according to her movements.
"They tell me I'm at the penthouse," she says.
It took more than eight hours to move all of the patients. That's partially because these patients are some of Charlotte's most ill. CEO Daniel Dunmyer of the Carolinas Specialty Hospital explains.
"Most of our patients don’t have one thing wrong with them," Dunmyer says. "They have four, five, six different things. That makes it very complex."
The building cost of $40 million was split between the hospital and the Carolinas HealthCare System's new rehab facility, which owns the bottom two floors. The rehab facility will open next month.
