The medical care of mentally retarded persons in public residential facilities.

Large public residential facilities have traditionally been society's primary service resource for persons with serious mental retardation. Despite current emphasis on restricting admissions and community placement of retarded persons, approximately 175,000 people continue to reside in 230 institutions throughout the United States. This population is vulnerable to a variety of chronic medical disorders that diminish successful adaptation to a more normal life-style, especially when health services are marginal. Institutional medical staffs have been largely isolated from their physician peers, and their patients have not had access to medical care equivalent to that available in the community. We describe the recent affiliation of a teaching hospital with a Massachusetts institution. We suggest that such affiliations would assure better medical care for mentally retarded persons while increasing physicians' knowledge of attendant medical and societal problems.