This is the fourth in a series of seven issue briefs. The John A. Hartford Foundation Change AGEnts Initiative accelerates sustained practice change that improves the care of older adults. It does this by harnessing the collective power of The John A. Hartford Foundation’s interprofessional community of scholars, clinicians…
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This week we offer a poignant story of one physician's struggle to understand what he could do to help his aging and ailing new patient. Written by Dr. Mitch Kaminski, and originally posted on Pulse, a leading narrative medicine website, this true tale makes the point that if we don't…
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From left, featured experts Peggy O'Kane, Robert Berenson, and Caroline Blaum listen intently. Like so many stakeholders in health care, we at the John A. Hartford Foundation have many of our hopes pinned on enhanced primary care as a way of improving health outcomes, particularly for older Americans who…
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If our work at the John A. Hartford Foundation has taught us one thing, it’s this: In the quest to transform primary care for older adults, a huge part of the answer is deploying more geriatrically expert primary care teams that can coordinate and deliver care designed around the patient’s…
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Once again I want to call the Hartford community (all of the grantees, fellows, scholars, alums, and friends) to respond to an opportunity to put geriatrics expertise to work. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the 900-pound gorilla with a checkbook whose actions shape so much of health…
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While still shrouded in mist, the path to transforming our health care system is becoming more clear. While the view is still hazy, last week the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) took a major step to clarify how it will address the major challenge facing Medicare (and…
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A workgroup convened by the Alzheimer's Association has come up with a useful tool to help clinicians detect cognitive impairment during the Medicare Annual Wellness Visit. This is a great example of one of our new mottos at the John A. Hartford Foundation: “Putting geriatrics expertise to work.” We’ve spent…
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If we want to improve primary care for older adults, we need to know something about their primary care experiences. To find out, we commissioned our first poll, with help from Strategic Communications & Planning, called “How Does It Feel? The Older Adult Health Care Experience.” Between February 29 and…
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Last week, I wrote about serendipitously discovering the work of Primary Care Progress, a grassroots physician advocacy group trying to strengthen primary care. The serendipity continued shortly after I saw their work in cyberspace, when I got a chance to meet some of its leaders in the real world (in…
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As a way to keep in touch with developments in health care for older adults and feed the raging “Jhartfound” social media beast (joke), I have a series of Google searches running that send me an e-mail digest every night of new online content that uses terms like geriatric, long-term…
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