We have to develop strategies by which primary care providers and community agencies can do some of this work.” “Most hospitals don’t have the ability to sustain a program like ours. “We know that we don’t have the capacity to evaluate everybody and certainly to continue to stay engaged and treat everybody,” Singer said. But it’s possible that because of their long wait for a diagnosis, they miss the window for a particular study. Patients can participate in clinical studies much sooner than they can get an evaluation at Acadia Hospital, he said. “That’s a priority of ours to be able to offer that for people in Maine.” “We’re the only research center north of Boston and the only one like this in Maine, so we provide access to clinical studies for people,” he said. Alzheimer’s disease research is the focus. Strauss Neurocognitive Research Program in collaboration with Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center, Singer said. A new residency program at Acadia Hospital, expected to start in summer 2024, will train psychiatrists on site and should help with future recruitment.Īcadia Hospital is also in high demand because it serves patients from around the state and has the Robert C. Medical professionals with expertise on various dementias and related conditions are hard to come by, and they often want to remain at academic medical centers in big cities, Singer said. Moving the clinic to a new space will locate patients closer to the parking area. The hospital’s $42.9 million expansion, though good news for children and adult patients needing inpatient psychiatric beds, will not grow the Mood and Memory Clinic. The hospital system also loses money because it depends on Medicare to reimburse services, he said.Īcadia Hospital’s Mood and Memory Clinic has 11 staff members, ranging from medical assistants to neuropsychiatrists, who can keep track of about 1,000 patients. Justin Otis - who is helping make a dent in the waitlist - the hospital is limited in terms of size and staffing capacity, Singer said. While telehealth offers flexibility and Northern Light Health recently hired Dr. Another factor is that young people are leaving Maine instead of moving here, and the state needs to find a way to attract them and provide proper training, career development and other opportunities. Their jobs are low paying, high stress and exhausting, which contributes to high turnover rates, Wyman said. Not only is there a lack of neurologists and geriatricians - there were 36 in Maine in 2021 - but the state also needs more direct care workers such as nurse aides and nursing assistants, he said. That means they are projected to have fewer than 10 neurologists per 10,000 people with dementia in 2025. Maine is among 20 states considered a “dementia neurology desert,” said Drew Wyman, executive director of the Maine chapter. The Alzheimer’s Association, which has a Maine chapter, points to workforce shortages nationwide and within the state as a major problem. Meanwhile, the crisis in dementia care has been on a slow boil for a decade.” Acadia Hospital is responding to that by building a new pediatric. “Apart from COVID and the crisis in health care that it has created, there’s the mental health crisis. “This is the epidemic that is lost among the other epidemics,” Singer said. Early detection, a diagnosis and setting up a treatment plan are crucial so their quality of life doesn’t continue to deteriorate. For a patient experiencing abnormal memory loss, experts say time is everything. While the crisis in dementia care isn’t new, the wait times at Acadia Hospital - one of two private psychiatric care hospitals in Maine - are concerning for a state that has the oldest population in the country. Sometimes that’s Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia or other cognitive conditions, and other times it’s a sleep disorder or depression contributing to their symptoms, Singer said.
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