Laguna Hills : Hospital Shows Off Its Rehabilitation Center

It doesn’t look much like a hospital. The floors are covered with soft carpeting and the soft, muted color scheme is a departure from the antiseptic white and drab tans normally associated with hospital rooms.

But then again, this isn’t your normal hospital setting. It is Saddleback Community Hospital’s newly expanded rehabilitation center, designed to help victims of moderate to severe brain injuries, strokes, arthritis and other debilitating ailments to re-enter society.

At an open house Wednesday, more than 300 doctors, nurses, physical therapists and other health-care professionals were on hand to tour the facility. Like the center itself, the open house, which featured harp music to set a relaxed mood, was strictly low-key.

Recently enlarged to 15 beds, the center, which takes up about a third of the hospital’s second floor, uses occupational therapy to teach its patients how to care for themselves. The center is only the second of its kind in Orange County. Its goal, according to Marianne Benton, director of rehabilitative services, is to get its patients “functioning in the real world.”