EAST LONGMEADOW – Berkshire Health, in conjunction with the state, has opened a treatment center for coronavirus patients who are stable enough to be released from the hospital, but not yet healthy enough to return to society.

The former East Longmeadow Skilled Nursing Center, now known as the Pioneer Valley Rehabilitation Center, on 305 Maple St. opened the center to coronavirus patients on April 13. Lisa Gaudet, who serves as the vice president of communication for Pittsfield-based Berkshire Healthcare Systems, said the state first approached them as they were developing a strategy to address the surge.

“The governor and the Massachusetts Department of Health were, as part of their strategy to address the potential surge, identified current or vacant nursing homes to do the work,” she said. Gaudet said the state then “asked us to make the facility available.”

Gaudet said the center, which was previously vacant, “was scheduled to be turned into assisted living for memory impaired.” These plans, she said, were “put on hold” so that the company could “step forward and help in the Pioneer Valley.”

She told Reminder Publishing that 69 beds would be available to treat those who had healed enough to be released from the hospital, but were still not well enough to go home. In order to be admitted to the facility, they must meet certain requirements. Gauden said some requirements include:

•They must have tested positive for COVID-19 or been admitted to a coronavirus center

•They must be coming from an acute care hospital

•They must be clinically stable after a period of monitoring or observation

•The individual is not able to be discharged to the community

Also eligible to be admitted to the center are residents from other assisted living facilities that meet the same criteria.

Gaudet said the facility is and will continue to be staffed largely by contracted members of nursing agencies, but there are a few Berkshire Health employees working in the building. She explained that they hired contracted nurses because they hadn’t yet had the chance to hire staff for the facility, which was in the process of being built prior to the pandemic. “Our own staff is at the new building we just built. We didn’t have that kind of staff at our fingertips,” she said.

She also explained that while 69 beds in total would be available, they would be “bringing up different units at different times.” The first unit, Gaudet said, would host 26 beds. When and/or if those were filled to capacity, they would then add 23 beds. If all the beds on the second unit were also filled, they would then add a third unit with 20 additional beds being made available.

Gaudet said having this facility will help ease the burden of facilities such as Baystate Medical Center and Mercy Medical Center, who are treating the bulk of COVID-19 positive patients in the Pioneer Valley. “There needed to be places that hospitals that might be experiencing a surge and capacity issues to discharge these patients. Folks are concerned about having positive cases in care facilities,” she explained. “Putting them in a dedicated facility where you have the dedicated staff, where you have the nurses is going to help Baystate and Mercy.”

Those in critical condition due to the virus, still needing around the clock care and help breathing would still be treated at facilities such as Baystate and Mercy. However, the facility, Gaudet said, would “make sense” for those recovering and showing minimal symptoms.

“I think you would expect they’ll keep those patients there, but if there are folks on the road to recovery, starting to improve, [then] this setting makes sense,” she said. “We can do a good job helping those folks improve and get back to their lives.”

Gaudet said the town officials in East Longmeadow provided “tremendous support” and were incredibly helpful in every step of the process. “The town was really helpful as this started to come to light. We had to talk with a variety of town leaders, bring them into what was being asked of us in terms of emergency responsive systems, ambulances, the board of health,” she said. “They all came together and provided us with tremendous support.”

She applauded the town’s ability to work with Berkshire Health in a collaborative manner and put the facility together in a matter of weeks, something she said in normal circumstances would have taken more than a year.

“This came about in a matter of weeks, this is something that probably would have been a year-plus in the making,” she said. Medical professionals in the Pioneer Valley, town officials in East Longmeadow and the state all came “together to work differently to respond to a public health need” in a “unique and admirable” way, she said.