Overview and Services

The advantage of the Medical-Psychiatry Service for doctor, patient and family:

• You have a patient with psychiatric or behavioral problems who needs immediate treatment for a medical/surgical condition. Admitting him to a regular hospital unit may upset the balance you have achieved with his psychiatric management. It could also prolong his hospital stay, drive up medical costs, and/or make additional inpatient psychiatric treatment necessary after discharge.
• You have a patient with a serious medical diagnosis and severe or acute depression. In order to treat his medical condition, you need to sustain management of his depression at the same time.
• You have an older, very frail patient with advancing dementia who has developed pneumonia. You suspect she is no longer capable of living alone. Her family is worried and frustrated about the situation. They need objective advice from professionals who are experienced in assessment and management options for this problem.
• You have a patient with a long history of alcohol abuse who has serious GI problems related to the disease. Due to GI bleeding, she requires an immediate hospital admission. By treating her alcoholism and medical condition simultaneously, you could decrease the likelihood of re-admission.
• You have a patient with chronic pain, or possible somatiform disorder, who needs holistic care planning in order to decrease the number of inpatient admissions which may occur.

Full continuum of care, including:

• Pre-admission evaluation
• Diagnostic workup and treatment planning with many provider options for management of care
• Multi-dimensional continuing care assessment, and arrangements to reduce the likelihood of re-admission.
• Ongoing consultation, advice and referral from staff, serving as a liaison/resource to continuing care providers.

Unit Services:

• Medical management by private physicians
• Psychiatric evaluation
• Geriatric assessment
• Family assessment
• Nursing assessment
• Information retrieval from referral sources
• Multi-disciplinary treatment plans
• Headache treatment
• Pain management

Additional unique features:

• Nursing staff with multi-specialty experience
• Unit-based social worker/discharge planner
• Intern/resident/physician assistant coverage
• Brief psychotherapy
• Competency assessment to help facilitate decisions
• Continual clinical evaluations by psychiatrists
• Family-centered approach on admission, during treatment, and for discharge planning

Multi-disciplinary professional staff, including:

• Registered Nurses
• Gerontologists
• Physical Therapists
• Psychiatrists
• Nutrition Specialists 
• Social Workers/Discharge Planners

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