Alzheimer’s & Dementia

Herzog Hospital currently maintains a 30 bed department to treat patients who suffer from psychogeriatric disabilities. They are crowded into one of the original wards built almost 40 years ago for the purpose of housing young, mobile psychiatric patients. Today, these departments are woefully inadequate for their current purpose. They are rundown and crowded, making the task of good medical and nursing care very difficult. These patients have to be relocated into new departments designed to meet their needs. This will also enable the introduction of an integrative service program for the care of psychogeriatric patients, combining ambulatory and inpatient care as detailed below.

The Department of Psychogeriatrics cares for two major types of patients. The first group comprises those suffering from severe dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease and Parkinson’s Disease. These patients require a great deal of care and supervision.

 The second group of patients are those who suffer from severe psychiatric diseases and therefore have been hospitalized for a long time. There they aged and they have now become a combination of a psychiatric and geriatric patient. Such patients require special long-term care combining the best of both worlds.

 Needless to say, in Israel many of these patients, in both groups, are Holocaust survivors for whom these are the final years in which they can live a normal life.

 The cause of more than fifty per cent of functional disorders in old age involves disorder in the central and peripheral nervous system.  Neurological diseases like stroke, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and other dementias are only a part of the enormous number of disorders which affect the elderly.  Improving neurological evaluation and treatment by combining diverse medical and paramedical fields, i.e. geriatric neurology, behavioral neurology, geriatrics, neuropsychology, psychiatry, psychology, social work and occupational therapy, can significantly improve the functioning level and the quality of life of the elderly, including memory, aches and pains and sleep.

 We plan to construct two new departments, each of 30 beds. The patients will be accommodated in fully equipped double rooms, designed to cope with the special needs of these patients. In the complex there will be a central block of facilities such as dining rooms, day rooms, occupational and physiotherapy as well as a day-care unit and rooms for doctors, social workers, neuro-psychologists etc. An adjacent garden will also give the patients much needed “freedom” whilst maintaining a controlled and protected environment.

 The Department provides three major avenues of care:

 1)      Day hospitalization and Out-Patient Center. This enables the observation, care and treatment of patients who cannot manage with just a short visit to the clinic because, for example, the spouse is incapable of caring for them or the       behavioural disorder appears infrequently. But, on the other hand, they do not  require full hospitalization. The facility will enable the support and maintenance of the patients during the day within the day hospitalization and care center.  There the patient will be evaluated by the medical, nursing and social staff so as  to determine a treatment program, as well as initiate the care.

 2) In-patient hospitalization. This is the full hospitalization program, which is currently within the hospital department of Psychogeriatrics.

Emergency Care Facility – this is an extension of the community care clinic and enables the family to bring an elderly relative in for evaluation and care on an emergency basis. Currently there is no such facility available anywhere in Israel. Today, if a patient requires urgent care during the evenings or weekends, the family usually have to turn to either a general emergency room, which is not geared to such cases, or to a psychiatric emergency room which is also not suitable as it is aimed at pure psychiatric patients. (The other alternative currently available is to turn to the municipal social services, which are very inadequate and have no solutions of their own).