We were delighted to see Guided Care featured in Anne Underwood's March 31 post to the New Old Age blog, on the New York Times Web site (http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/). We're proud of the support the John A. Hartford Foundation has been able to give to Guided Care and encouraged to see the model gaining notable media attention.

guided-care-logoDeveloped by Chad Boult, MD, and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Guided Care represents a new kind of health care delivery model that, like another of our programs, Care Management Plus, represents our deep interest in discovering new ways to bring higher quality primary care to older adults in a more cost effective way. Developing and implementing these new models is critical to the future sustainability of Medicare, which is quickly becoming overburdened with the costs of care.

Building off of positive pilot study results, Guided Care is currently being tested at eight primary care sites in the Baltimore-Washington D.C. area in a randomized trial involving more than 900 patients, 300 caregivers, and 48 primary care physicians. So far, results are encouraging.

For Guided Care or other programs like it to make broader difference, of course, we need a national policy framework that can adequately support them. These issues will be paramount at a National Health Policy Forum meeting that will be convened on April 3rd, where Dr. Boult will speak on care coordination and the critical to the needs of older adults seeing multiple providers in different health care settings. Care coordination is a core component of Guided Care.

For more information about Guided Care, please see:

www.guidedcare.org/index.asp

For more information about Care Management Plus, please see:

www.caremanagementplus.org