CHUCK HUMEL / CHRONICLE
				Nine stroke patient rooms encircle the nurses’ station at Community Regional Medical Center in Lorain.

LORAIN — Stroke victims in Lorain County will no longer have to worry about making a long recovery in a drab hospital room.

Community Regional Medical Center is opening a nine-bed stroke unit in mid-July that should make patients feel more than at home.

“It looks and feels like a hotel,” said Jennifer Kennedy, director of marketing and communications for the hospital. Stroke patients will be surrounded by home-style lighting, artwork and open spaces, as well as flat-screen TVs.

Each room is equipped with a single bed and a pull-out couch, as well as a large handicapped-accessible bathroom.

The five-star digs are afforded to the stroke patients because their hospital stays are longer than those of typical patients, according to Dhruv Patel, the medical director of the stroke unit.

Nurses trained in stroke treatment will watch the unit from a central circular nurses’ station. Keeping all of the patients in one area helps speed up recovery, said Patel.

The hospital will have the only designated stroke program in the county. While they always saw stroke patients, the new unit will give them the whole program, from admission to treatment to rehabilitation, said Victoria Wearsch, CHP’s product line director of orthopedics and neurosciences.

Strokes are the third-leading cause of death in the United States.

Contact Alison Dietz at 329-7128 or metro@chroniclet.com.

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