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22 Hartford Business Journal • March 26, 2018 • www.HartfordBusiness.com GREATER HARTFORD HEALTH • Spring 2018 Aging Support Hospitals add doctors, beds to meet growing demands for geriatric psychiatry \\ By John Stearns H ealthcare providers across Connecticut are trying to position themselves to meet the psychiatric needs of the state's aging population. Since just last year, several hospitals have invested millions of dollars adding capacity to their geriatric psychiatry inpatient units, trying to address what experts say is a critical and growing need. e latest development came this month, when Bristol Hospital opened its new $3.4 million, 15-bed inpatient behavioral-health unit for seniors. Last fall, Manchester Memorial Hospital opened a geriatric psychiatry unit with up to 21 beds, part of a $1 million renovation. In addition, Waterbury Hospital informed state regulators recently that it wants to make all of its 30 inpatient psychiatry beds available to adult and geriatric patients during periods of low demand for adolescent services. More geriatric psychiatry patients are expected at Connecticut hospitals as people live longer and as awareness and acceptance of mental illness grows, said Dr. Ava Pannullo, chief medical officer and medical director at e Hospital at Hebrew Senior Care in West Hartford. "We're all living longer and as we live longer, we change physiologically, medically and psychiatrically, cognitively," said Pannullo, board-certified in internal medicine and geriatric medicine. Psychiatric problems people coped with when they were middle-aged can be tougher to deal with in their 80s as cognitive abilities decline, she said. Dementia is a complicating factor when combined with psychiatric issues like depression, schizophrenia, anxiety, bipolar or personality disorders that people might have had throughout their life, in addition to other medical conditions seniors face, Pannullo said. Hebrew Senior Care says most of its behavioral-health patients have dementia. Assessing the need Psychiatric hospitalization is seen as a treatment of last resort for patients who need intensive care, and who perhaps did not receive effective treatment before becoming critically ill. e Virginia-based Treatment Advocacy Center characterizes psychiatry hospitalization as "the equivalent of the cardiac ICU for heart patients." Dr. Genevieve Henry, a geriatric psychiatrist that Bristol Hospital hired to lead its new unit, said the number of older patients seeking psychiatric and other medical care continues to grow. "We're kind of at the tip of the iceberg right now with the Baby Boomers, so we're just beginning to feel the tremors of what's to come," Henry said. Publicly available data doesn't indicate exactly how many geriatric psychiatry beds exist in Connecticut. But it does indicate that utilization is high — 87 percent of the 629 staffed adult psychiatry beds at acute-care hospitals were filled in 2015, according to a 2016 report by the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS). In fiscal year 2015, more than 33,000 patients were discharged from Connecticut hospitals for inpatient mental disorder treatment, DMHAS data shows. Psychiatric units also exist at state-owned facilities and organizations such as Hebrew and Masonicare Dr. Martin Cooper — a geriatric psychiatrist and medical director at Farmington's Connecticut Mental Health Specialists, which provides senior H B J P H O T O S \ \ J O H N S T E A R N S Dr. Genevieve Henry, a board-certified geriatric psychiatrist and medical director of the new senior behavioral health unit at Bristol Hospital, is seen at the nurse's station of the 15-bed inpatient unit, which opened earlier this month. Dr. Ava Pannullo, Chief Medical Officer and Medical Director, The Hospital at Hebrew Senior Care