Photo courtesy Sheltering Arms Institute
A virtual ribbon cutting will be held at noon today to mark the opening of the 114-bed Sheltering Arms Institute, a $95 million physical rehabilitation hospital in the West Creek Medical Park off West Broad Street Road, run in collaboration by Sheltering Arms and VCU Health.
The public will also have the chance to take a virtual tour of the state-of-the-art hospital, which will provide care to those who have survived strokes and brain and spinal cord injuries while also providing general rehabilitation to those who have suffered from illness and other injuries.
On June 13, Sheltering Arms and VCU Health will begin to move patients into the new facility from their three current rehabilitation hospitals, Sheltering Arms Hanover, Sheltering Arms South and VCU Health. The 212,063-square-foot hospital provides all patients with private rooms and has three gyms and space for a research facility.
“The whole impetus for this … was to bring the very best of science and research and clinical care,” says Stephanie Sulmer, vice president of marketing and business development for Sheltering Arms.
The project received $25 million from the Sheltering Arms Foundation and raised about $19 million from capital campaign donors. “If it wasn't for the Richmond community, we wouldn't exist, because we were founded by people in the community,” says Sulmer, referring to when the first Sheltering Arms Hospital was founded by volunteers in 1889. “We wouldn't have been able to build this hospital without people in the community.”
Sheltering Arms is able to accept patients who have recovered from COVID-19; however, they are only accepting patients who have tested negative for COVID-19 twice.
