Hospitals Add Doctors, Beds to Meet Growing Demands for Geriatric Psychiatry

Healthcare providers in Connecticut are attempting to prepare to meet the psychiatric needs of the state's senior population, reports Hartford Business . "We're all living longer and as we live longer, we change physiologically, medically, and psychiatrically, cognitively," says Hebrew Senior Care's Dr. Ava Pannullo. She also notes dementia is a complicating factor in combination with psychiatric problems such as depression, schizophrenia, anxiety, bipolar, or personality disorders that people might have had throughout their life, in addition to other medical conditions faced by seniors. Several Connecticut hospitals have invested millions of dollars since last year, adding capacity to their geriatric psychiatry inpatient units. The utilization of geriatric psychiatry beds is high in Connecticut, with 87 percent of the 629 staffed beds at acute-care hospitals being filled in 2015, according to a 2016 study by the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS). Moreover, in fiscal year 2015, more than 33,000 people were discharged from Connecticut hospitals for inpatient mental disorder treatment. DMHAS also estimates that state hospital beds for people 65 and older have been relatively constant since fiscal 2013, about 4.5 percent of total beds in the system. Dr. Martin Cooper at Farmington's Connecticut Mental Health Specialists says he is concerned about a serious shortage of geriatric psychiatrists in the state's hospital system.