Kindred Healthcare Announces Affiliation with Craig Hospital and Shepherd Center

Kindred Healthcare, Inc. (“Kindred”) (NYSE:KND), Craig Hospital in Englewood, Colo., and Shepherd Center in Atlanta, Ga., announced today that the healthcare organizations have entered into an affiliation agreement to work collaboratively to pursue new neuro-rehabilitation models that seek to improve patient care across the health continuum.

Kindred provides healthcare services at thousands of locations across the country, including inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation services and rehabilitation hospitals in partnership with leading health systems. Craig Hospital and Shepherd Center each offer best-in-class, comprehensive, specialized long-term acute care and rehabilitation services for people who have sustained catastrophic spinal cord injury, brain injury, or other neuromuscular injuries or illnesses. Building upon their core competencies, the parties intend to work collaboratively and with third-party hospitals and healthcare providers to expand access to high-quality and innovative medical and specialty rehabilitation care. That care will range from catastrophic to post-acute to meet the needs of this unique patient population.

The parties also intend to support educational programming and research that supports specialized rehabilitative care across an expanded national footprint. They also will share clinically proven practices and educational programming, while continuing to preserve separate and independent business operations. The parties anticipate that their unique affiliation will expand service offerings and provide expertise that delivers best-in-class, post-acute neuro-rehabilitation care to cities throughout the nation.

“Craig Hospital and Shepherd Center deliver outstanding rehabilitative care to help people live as independently as possible after spinal cord or traumatic brain injury,” said Mike Fordyce, CEO at Craig Hospital. “We hope our affiliation with Kindred will create a network of expert neuro-rehabilitation care locations in post-acute settings.”

Benjamin A. Breier, President and Chief Executive Officer of Kindred, said:  “This affiliation with Craig Hospital and Shepherd Center will provide new consumer solutions through access to the most appropriate patient-centered, coordinated rehabilitative and medical care across the full continuum. Coming together and partnering in first-class educational programs, we will deliver on our shared goals to improve quality, clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction.”

Gary Ulicny, Ph.D., president and CEO of Shepherd Center, added:  “We expect the affiliation of Shepherd Center, Craig Hospital and Kindred Healthcare to increase our combined ability to help people with brain and spinal cord injuries access the high-intensity rehabilitation care and medical services we collectively offer. We will raise the bar in neuro-rehabilitation care nationwide and offer high-quality care that best meets patient needs in locations closer to or at home.”

About Craig Hospital
Craig Hospital in Englewood, Colo., is world-renowned for the specialty rehabilitation and research for patients with spinal cord injury and traumatic brain injury. Craig is a 93-bed, private, not-for-profit, free-standing rehabilitation and long-term acute care hospital that provides a comprehensive system of inpatient and outpatient medical care, rehabilitation, neurosurgical rehabilitative care, and long-term follow-up services. Half of Craig's patients come from outside of Colorado. Craig is designated by the National Institute on Disability Rehabilitation and Research (NIDRR) as a Model System Center for both spinal cord injury and traumatic brain injury. Craig is the NIDRR National Statistical TBI database for the other 16 Model System Centers in the U.S. Craig received the prestigious Magnet Recognition® for quality in nursing, in 2005-2010 and 2011-2015 and the Magnet Prize® Award in 2012. Craig Hospital has received the NDNQI® award as the nation's top rehab hospital, four out of the past five years. In 2013 and 2014, Craig was voted by employees as a "Top Work Place" by the Denver Post, and was ranked in the top 150 places to work in healthcare by Becker's Healthcare in 2014. Craig has been ranked as a Top Ten rehabilitation center by U.S. News & World Report for 25 consecutive years, since the rankings began. www.craighospital.org

About Kindred Healthcare
Kindred Healthcare, Inc., a top-85 private employer in the United States, is a FORTUNE 500 healthcare services company based in Louisville, Kentucky with annual revenues of approximately $7.2 billion¹. At December 31, 2014, on a pro forma basis to include Gentiva and Centerre, Kindred through its subsidiaries had approximately 103,000 employees providing healthcare services in 2,872 locations in 47 states, including 97 transitional care hospitals, 16 inpatient rehabilitation hospitals, 90 nursing centers, 22 sub-acute units, 634 Kindred at Home hospice, home health and non-medical home care locations, 100 inpatient rehabilitation units (hospital-based) and a contract rehabilitation services business, RehabCare, which served 1,913 non-affiliated facilities. Ranked as one of Fortune magazine’s Most Admired Healthcare Companies for six years, Kindred’s mission is to promote healing, provide hope, preserve dignity and produce value for each patient, resident, family member, customer, employee and shareholder we serve. For more information, go to www.kindredhealthcare.com. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

¹Revenues were computed by combining the twelve months ended December 31, 2014 data for Kindred, Gentiva Health Services, Inc. (“Gentiva”), which was acquired by Kindred on February 2, 2015, and Centerre Healthcare Corporation (“Centerre”), which was acquired by Kindred on January 1, 2015.