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This Ridgewood adult health center has patients celebrating and loving life

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Photos by Anthony Giudice/QNS

The staff at the Bushwick Adult Day Health Center (ADHC) in Ridgewood are dedicated to making sure their patients are not only feeling well but also living well, with tons of programs and activities to keep everyone loving and living life to the fullest.

The Bushwick ADHC is an adult day center that caters to patients aged 21 and older — unlike most senior day centers which have higher age requirements — and who have Medicaid.

Those are their only requirements to be considered to join the center.

Gabriela Maciel, community liaison for the Bushwick ADHC’s Ridgewood location, explained that one way the center is dedicated to getting patients feeling well is that each person who wants to join needs to fill out a basic medial form so the staff nurse and social worker can create a health plan for each person.

“They will come up with a care plan,” Maciel said. “They will invite the person back, sit with them and review all the information and come up with a care plan individualized for that person. We are not all the same. We are all humans, but not we’re not all the same, so each one needs individualized care.”

Once accepted into the program, a patient is then allowed to access all the benefits provided by the Bushwick ADHC, such as transportation to and from the center, the registered nurse who is on site at all times, hot breakfasts and lunches, medication management (with doctor’s approval), physical and occupational therapy, as well as fun activities such as arts and craft classes, day trips, ESL and technology class, and much more.

“The other thing we offer is social work,” Maciel said. “Our social workers are great too, because some of the folks come in and there is a language barrier, and the social worker can help them with managing their mail which is all in English and often times contains important information regarding resubmitting for their food stamps, or Medicaid, or other services.”

The center currently cares for more than 70 total people, with a maximum of 39 people at the center on a daily basis, since every person is has their personalized care plan that doesn’t have them come in each day.

Patients at the Bushwick ADHC love their time there and value the friendships they made with other patients and the staff.

“I think you should celebrate life. As long as you’re breathing you should be celebrating life on the daily,” Maciel said. “So we try to really instill that here.”

The Bushwick ADHC is located at 59-25 67th Ave., and is open Monday through Saturday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Bushwick Center has two other locations, one in Bushwick and one in Jamaica at 172-61 Baisley Blvd.