Acute geriatrics at the front door

摘要

Older people with frailty and urgent care needs are major, uses of health and social care services. Comprehensive geriatric assessment (CGA) is an evidence-based approach to improving their outcomes, as well as improving service outcomes. Geriatricians form a small proportion of the overall workforce and cannot address the population need alone, so all clinicians (doctors, nurses, therapists and so on) need to engage in delivering CGA as a process of care, underpinned by specific competencies-which can be developed. Delivery of this care pathway needs to be measured and improved as rigorously as campaigns like those for improving sepsis or eradicating methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.