Joint program of New York City's Mount Sinai Hospital-Jewish Home and Hospital for Aged. (for of care of the elderly)

Joint Program of New York City's Mount Sinai Hospital/Jewish Home and Hospital for Aged

A program in New York City jointly sponsored by a distinguished medical school and an equally prestigious nursing home could prove to be a turning point in the generations-old struggle to increase MD interest in the aging. It reflects a pair of contradictory trends that has traditionally frustrated administrators seeking to persuade physicians to carry on their practices in senior-car settings.

On the one hand, as is commonly known, the aged constitute the fastest growing segment of our country's population; and already there are more nursing home beds in the United States than acute hospital beds -- with the ratio increasing.

On the other, the medical profession historically has responded minimally to the challenge that geriatrics presents.

The decision by the Mount Sinai School of Medicine to require its prospective physicians in their fourth year to include geriatric medicine among the medical specialties that they study and the eager cooperation of the Jewish Home and Hospital for Aged (JHHA) -- in providing this broadened experience -- is seen by policymakers in both institutions as working to introduce a larger proportion of graduating doctors to the aging sector of the population.

Both the hospital and the nursing home have had long histories of involvement with New York City's health needs. Similarly, innovation has characterized the development of each. Both now are nonsectarian. Founded in lower Manhattan in 1852 as the Jews' Hospital, Mount Sinai since early in this century has occupied a quarter-of-a-mile stretch fronting Central Park along Fifth Avenue, one of the city's most attractive …