The J. Paul Sticht Center on Aging and Rehabilitation – one of the world’s first geriatrics-focused health care centers – conducts a wide array of leading-edge clinical, rehabilitation, wellness and research programs to help seniors and their families understand and address the unique physical, mental, social and emotional challenges that accompany aging.
The section employs an interdisciplinary approach to evaluate and treat medical, mental and functional problems at the same time. A patient’s care team may include a geriatrician, neurologist and psychiatrist with nurse practitioners, physical therapists, pharmacists, dietitians, social workers and pastoral care representatives brought in as needed or as desired. There are two Acute Care for the Elderly (ACE) units, located on the main campus in Winston-Salem and at Wake Forest Baptist Health – Davie Medical Center.
Wake Forest Baptist physicians and scientists are currently conducting 23 clinical trials related to aging and nine dealing specifically with Alzheimer’s.
Programs and Services
The Sticht Center houses two major affiliate programs: The Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center and the Kulynych Center for Memory and Cognition Research.
Supported by a federal grant of $8.7 million over five years, Wake Forest Baptist has established a new center for research into Alzheimer’s disease. The Alzheimer’s Disease Core Center at Wake Forest Baptist is among 31 National Institutes of Health-funded research centers in the country. The mission of the new center is to advance Alzheimer’s research and education and to contribute to the national network of research centers. Its primary focus will be on the roles vascular and metabolic disorders have in the occurrence of Alzheimer’s.
House Call Program
The Wake Forest Baptist House Call Program is a multi-disciplinary team passionate about caring for our patients in their own homes. We serve three populations with often overlapping needs:
- Home-Based Primary Care: Community-dwelling or Bermuda Village Assisted Living patients who are home-bound due to either physical or cognitive limitations & requiring assistance to leave the home. We provide longitudinal primary care at home and coordinate care just like in brick and mortar office-based primary care clinic.
- Transitional Care: Short-term home visits (usually within 30 days) after hospitalization or emergency department visits as a bridge to patients’ existing primary care providers. These patients do not have to be home-bound but often have complex medical issues that require a home visit for evaluation.
- Home-Based Palliative Care: Internally referred patients who receive either palliative consultation at home for symptom management or end-of-life hospice collaboration with area hospices. Patients do not have to be on hospice to receive palliative consultation.
Our team consists of physicians, physician assistants and nurse practitioners, pharmacists, ambulatory care nurse navigators, social workers, and other support staff. We are able to obtain blood work, certain imaging tests, in patients’ homes. For more information, please contact 336-713-HOME or see our brochure.