University Specialty Hospital provides chronic care for people with a variety of injuries and illnesses. The four-story, 250,000-square-foot hospital is located just a mile away from the University of Maryland Medical Center.
With 180 beds, University Specialty Hospital focuses on the complex needs of chronically ill patients, with the goal of helping them return to society with the maximum independence possible. Many of its patients are brain injured or dependent on ventilators. The hospital works to help them avoid institutionalization and attain the highest possible level of independent function.
The hospital's Ventilator Management Program provides specialized nursing and medical intervention for patients who need pulmonary ventilation due to an injury, chronic disease, or other respiratory or neurological problems. Patients have a range of conditions, from spinal cord injury to Guillain-Barre Syndrome to advancing multiple sclerosis or Lou Gehrig's Disease. In addition to respiratory therapy, the 72-bed ventilator unit offers physical rehabilitation to help patients relearn mobility skills and activities of daily living, as well as education in nutrition and adjustment to illness.
The goal is to wean patients from the mechanical ventilators and enable them to reestablish breathing on their own. More than half of all patients successfully come off the ventilators. Family involvement and support is crucial to their success, and family members are closely involved in the treatment process and in making discharge plans. The patient care team -- primary care physicians, pulmonary and infectious disease specialists, therapists, nurses, and others -- offers guidance in making the home environment safe and accessible.
University Specialty Hospital also has one of the state's leading rehabilitation programs for individuals with behavioral or cognitive problems following brain injuries. The Traumatic Brain Injury Program provides behavioral management and modification through a multidisciplinary team -- nurses, physical medicine and rehabilitation physicians, internal medicine physicians, psychiatrists, neuro-psychologists, therapists, and other specialists -- who work with patients and families to foster the patient's independence and re-entry into an appropriate setting.
In its Medically Complex Care Program, the hospital treats patients with such diverse conditions as wounds and ulcers, infectious diseases, post-surgical complications, renal failure, and complicated diabetes. Efforts in wound management, for example, address breakdowns of soft tissue. The skin may break as a result of trauma, a major illness, or because of the way a stroke or spinal cord patient lies on his or her skin. Such wounds make a patient vulnerable to infection and may require time to heal or surgical intervention.
The hospital also cares for patients who are comatose as a result of brain injury. Besides providing for medication and nutritional needs, specialists and nurses engage the senses of smell, taste, and touch to help speed recovery. They also work with patients to improve range of motion and cognitive ability. As a result of the Coma Emergence Program, many brain-injured individuals have become more alert and responsive than they would have without aggressive rehabilitation.
University Specialty Hospital
601 South Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21230
410-547-8500 MAIN
410-783-2414 TTY
www.specialtyhospital.org