A beacon geriatrics project for a city with an increasingly ageing population
On 25 January 2019, the ARONA clinic for geriatric medicine at Blumberger Damm in Berlin-Marzahn celebrated its opening. Following-breaking ceremony in September 2016 and the topping-out ceremony at the beginning of 2018, the clinic will open on schedule in the new year. District Mayor Dagmar Pohle is also expected to attend the celebration. “We are delighted that with the ARONA clinic now collaborating with the Unfallkrankenhaus Berlin (ukb), we can close the gap in the provision of geriatric care in the Berlin-Marzahn district,” explains Dr med. Kai-Uwe Wolf, senior consultant at the ARONA clinic for geriatric medicine. “Berlin, and the Marzahn district in particular, suffer from a glaring lack of geriatric beds with regard to our increasingly ageing society. As a developer, our aim was to improve this situation for the long-term. A goal that we have now been able to successfully realise completely without subsidies,” clarifies Nikolai Burkart, Managing Director of the developer DZG (Deutsches Zentrum für Geriatrie (German Centre for Geriatrics)) Berlin. Whereas Berlin otherwise offers predominantly geriatric places in general clinics, the new specialist clinic provides intensive treatment for elderly patients exclusively.
Over 300 applicants: recruitment success for Germany’s first paperless geriatrics facility
Throughout Germany, there is a shortage of skilled workers in the care sector and the “Care Conference 2019” (Kongress Pflege 2019) in Berlin, also taking place on 25 January, will address the topic of modern recruitment concepts and the problem of the “battle” for skilled workers. Yet the ARONA clinic received more than 300 applications.
“This undoubted recruitment success is for us an indication that we have positioned ourselves right as a specialist clinic: it’s down to our purely digital patient documentation, our approach to personalised medicine and, last but not least, the clinic’s modern architecture,” explains Magdalena Eilers, Managing Director of the ARONA clinic.
In contrast with most German clinics, the patient documentation at the ARONA clinic is completely paperless and digital, based on the “electronic patient file”. All data can be accessed at any time via tablets and mobile ward trolleys. The ARONA clinic thus achieves maximum transparency, and the staff have more time for treating the patients.
Personalised medicine: novel drug tests envisaged
State-of-the-art laboratory diagnostics will identify individual traits at the genetic level that predict how well individual patients will respond to specific medicines. This will enable interactions between drugs to be detected, intoxication to be avoided, and prescriptions to be personalised: the aim being the overall more effective and safe use of medicines, and better quality medical results. The special medication tests are being used in the ARONA clinic for the first time in Germany, and contribute to the targeted individual treatment of patients’ symptoms.
ukb health campus Marzahn: collaboration with the Unfallkrankenhaus Berlin hospital
With regard to a smooth transition of care as well as further diagnostics and treatment, the ARONA clinic works particularly closely with the BG Klinikum Unfallkrankenhaus Berlin. “The support of the medical director of the ukb, Prof. Dr med. Axel Ekkernkamp, was decisive in ensuring that the ARONA clinic is now part of the ukb health campus, one of the most innovative health locations in Germany,” emphasises Burkart. Following their treatment, older patients of the ukb and other surrounding hospitals will receive further treatment quickly and easily on the three wards of the ARONA clinic, before being discharged home or to a care facility. GPs in private practice can also directly refer their patients to the ARONA clinic if there is an appropriate indication.