History
Asklepios Klinik Altona (AKA) was built on a fallout shelter from 1961-1970 as one of the largest hospitals of maximum care in Hamburg, drafted for more than 1.000 patients and 31 wards. Since 2005 AKA belongs to the Asklepios group.
Profile
AKA is a hospital of maximum care, with approximately 620 inpatient beds in 14 clinical departments and 5 more institutes, and one of the largest emergency rooms in the metropolitan area. The hospital is a core member of the Asklepios Tumorzentrum Hamburg. At the site, more than 4,400 cancer patients are diagnosed and/or treated per year as in- or outpatients. The hospital is a teaching hospital of the University of Hamburg and the Semmelweis University Budapest, Campus Hamburg.
The Department of Medical Oncology, with Sections Hematology, Rheumatology, and Palliative Care runs 25 beds for patients with hematological malignancies, 16-20 for patients with solid tumors and 5-10 for rheumatology. This is accompanied by an outpatient oncology clinic. Since January 2014, a designated Palliative Care Unit (11 beds) has been established.
Specialities
The Asklepios Tumorzentrum Hamburg comprises the management of cancer medicine across seven (public service) hospitals, serving about 40% of patients with cancer diagnoses at the catchment area of greater Hamburg. Annually, more than 16,000 cancer patients are newly diagnosed and/or treated at the facility.
Within the Cancer Center, specialized services are provided in a total of 4 palliative care units, The Cancer Center organizes 15 interdisciplinary “disease management tracks”, with Palliative and Supportive Care being one of them, All of those develop and establish common therapeutic standards, provided in algorithmic form, patient guidelines, research activities (joint clinical trial and translational research programs), programs in education and qualification, as well as in public awareness, and outreach activities, in cooperation with other providers. Tight cooperation and a (new) patient exchange exist with two specialized rehabilitation hospitals providing special programs for cancer patients (mainly breast, gastrointestinal, thyroid cancer and hematological malignancies) in curative and palliative setting.
The Cancer Center organizes one of the largest cancer conference in Germany every other year and an annually action day for patients and relatives to meet with experts every year, covering patient centered topics.
Starting by mid 2018, the center provides an additional outpatient care program in terms of a video format – and since the COVID pandemic with a special consultation program for Cancer Survivors and Patients with Long-Term Toxicities after antitumor therapies. Since 2020, we offer a specially dedicated program for young adults (mid-twenty to mid-thirty) with cancer, including of psychological education, social events and/or health education activities (e.g., cooking classes) and doing exercise (e.g., boxing, stand-up paddling) together. From August 2021 on, we offer a family counseling within the cancer center; this is run by a psycho-oncologist specially trained in interacting with children and adolescents.
Palliative and Supportive Care
The Palliative Care Service admits annually more than 300 new patients to its own inpatient unit. There is a long established low-threshold cooperation with the Pain Care Unit, for patients with complex pain symptoms and/or at need for an interventional pain management.
Together with the Oncology Care team, the multidisciplinary Palliative Care staff (psycho-oncologists, nutritionists, arts and music therapists, physiotherapists, social workers and chaplains) implements an interdisciplinary and holistic approach to understanding and treating the patients in need for management of symptoms and terminally ill persons. The psychological staff provides individual counseling and psychotherapy based on a supportive psychotherapeutic approach. Moreover, various types of relaxation techniques are offered to the patients as self-help strategies. The service offers a broad spectrum of diverse art therapies, offered as individual - and if necessary, as bedside intervention. Trained palliative care nurses advise and teach family care givers how to apply measures to relieve disease symptoms and treatment side effects.
To those patients who want to return home for the terminal phase, continuous medical and nursing backup is organized with partnering organizations: There are eight specialized multidisciplinary palliative outpatient care teams in the catchment area, providing specialized ambulatory palliative care, incl. a 24h emergency service with a palliative care physician on call and further 20 hospice services, 9 in- and outpatient facilities specialized for children and adolescents as well as 14 services offering grief counseling.
Last update: November 2021
