Aging of the population of a city and its implications for hospital-based services: the example of Tel Aviv-Yaffo.

The Tel Aviv (Israel) Medical Center serves an area with 270,000 residents, more than 20 percent of whom are over 65 years of age. This high proportion of elderly patients and increasing costs of hospitalization have prompted the center to develop alternative health care services that have made it possible for a number of aged patients to remain at home and ambulatory. Two such alternatives to hospitalization--the center's Day Care Clinic and Home Care Clinic--are described and estimates of savings in hospitalization costs are presented.