The extended care facility at mount Sinai city hospital center, Elmhurst, New York: Three-year experience

Extended care facilities are much discussed but too little supported. The ECF should be quite different from a nursing home or a home for the elderly. It is best located in or near a general hospital where it may serve as an excellent center for teaching and research in the problems (medical, social or psychiatric) of the older ill patient. More importantly, it provides a final opportunity for many borderline patients to recover enough mental and physical strength to return to comunity life and thus avoid unnecessary lifelong confinement in an institution. The ECF should be a lifeline for the older patient, and a control center for the medical-care system in helping to determine how the patient is to spend his remaining years.