Date of Award

1994

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Art

First Advisor

Marilyn Patterson

Second Advisor

Betty LeMasters

Third Advisor

Lynette Gerschefke

Abstract

The St. Joseph Health Center and St. Joseph Hospital West mission statement commissions the Hospital to be an advocate for, and agent of change in the community health-care system, and to provide a holistic health-care philosophy to the community. The Hospital's goal is to promote the health and well-being of the community by delivering effective institutional services.

Service to the community is at the philosophical core of St. Joseph Health Center and St. Joseph Hospital West. The Hospital will serve by becoming a leading provider of health-care. It will meet the needs of the patients and the community by providing for their physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. The services provided will be caring, respectful, sensitive, and valuable.

The elderly population is increasing throughout the area. There exists an opportunity to serve the elderly community in a way that both fulfills the mission of the hospital and profitably changes the elderly patient mix. Both objectives can be met by implementing a senior-care program that reaches out to the community to increase the available patient population. The Hospital would greatly expand its prospective patient population by offering community-based wellness care and creating a well-patient data base that would integrate with the in-patient data base to track prospective patients as they move from well-care programs to hospital in-patient.

Research has shown, and this paper will attempt to show, that active senior well-care programs not only increase hospital utilization, but decrease the average length of stay, because patients will enter the Hospital both healthier (requiring less rehabilitation) and sooner (because of early diagnosis). Senior wellness-care profitability increases dramatically and measurably, when a comprehensive hospital-based senior-care program is endorsed by senior management and implemented by dedicated staff.

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