Heritage Oaks Offers Geriatric Treatment Program to Meet Growing Community Mental Health Needs

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — (Jan. 12, 2010) — As a service to the Greater Sacramento community and to the rest of Northern California, Heritage Oaks Hospital is proud to offer its Geriatric Treatment Program featuring a full continuum of inpatient and outpatient psychiatric care available to seniors ages 62 and above. This program will be in addition to the regular curriculum that Heritage Oaks, a Psychiatric Solutions, Inc. (PSI) facility, has been providing since 1988 as a full-service behavioral health facility.

Lloyd Benjamin, M.D., who is double-board certified in psychiatry and geriatric psychiatry, will lead the comprehensive program designed to treat the complex psychiatric and substance abuse problems of older adults with primary psychiatric disorders. Such disorders include depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Patients that are medically stable, cognitively intact, and able to participate in and benefit from treatment will gain insight and the necessary tools to help maintain and enhance their quality of life.

The inpatient senior services at Heritage Oaks provide assessment, diagnosis and rapid stabilization of acute psychiatric and/or substance abuse problems. Inpatient treatment focuses on a smooth transition to less intensive, appropriate levels of follow-up care and support. Partial hospitalization services provide supportive follow-up care that improves patients’ clinical statuses and help them maintain optimum functioning levels on an outpatient basis. In addition, partial hospitalization helps prevent unnecessary relapses or re-hospitalization, and it allows patients to continue to live at home but come to the center during the day for treatment.

“We have recognized a growing need for a Geriatric Treatment Program at Heritage Oaks, and we are pleased to offer this much-needed service to our community,” said Kenneth Meibert, chief executive officer at Heritage Oaks. “Sound mental health is imperative at all stages of human life but especially so in older adults. Through this program, we hope to reach out to this group and provide them with the necessary building blocks to keep them mentally young even in their mature years.”

Heritage Oaks is a Medicare provider in addition to holding contracts with most commercial health insurance plans and Medicare HMOs.

About Heritage Oaks Hospital
Built in 1988, Heritage Oaks Hospital is a private, fully accredited 72-bed acute psychiatric facility offering a full range of individually tailored treatment services to adolescents, adults and senior adults. Heritage Oaks also has a satellite partial hospitalization program (PHP) to provide additional capacity in a different setting than the program on campus. The two programs combine to show an overall increase in the number of outpatients being treated either after an inpatient stay or in an effort to avoid hospitalization. For more information, visit www.heritageoaksmediapsi.com
About Psychiatric Solutions, Inc. (PSI)
Psychiatric Solutions, Inc. offers an extensive continuum of behavioral health programs to critically ill children, adolescents and adults and is the largest operator of owned or leased freestanding psychiatric inpatient facilities with more than 11,000 beds in 32 states, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. PSI also manages freestanding psychiatric inpatient facilities for government agencies and psychiatric inpatient units within medical/surgical hospitals owned by others.

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