AFHS Press Release: Age-Friendly Health Systems on Target to Impact 1,000 Health Care Organizations in 2020
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) has announced today that by the end of the year, Age-Friendly Health Systems (AFHS) is on track to achieve its goal of recognizing the work of 1,000 hospitals, office practices, retail clinics, and post-acute care facilities for improving care of older Americans.
As the press release notes, response to the COVID-19 pandemic in older adults has been helped by the 4Ms evidence-based framework: asking what Matters to older adults; making sure Medications are helpful, not harmful to patients; attending to Mentation, including delirium, depression, and dementia; and ensuring Mobility so older adults can maintain their function.
"The 4Ms framework could be adapted to the crisis situation — responding to the large increase in agitated delirium associated with COVID, rapid adoption of medication optimization strategies to reduce nurse-patient direct contact, and implementation of a 4Ms structure for telemedicine visits," noted Mary Tinetti, MD, Chief of Geriatrics, Yale School of Medicine and Yale New Haven Hospital, and Advisory Group founding co-chair for Age-Friendly Health Systems. "Teams accustomed to working together implemented necessary changes quickly. The AFHS movement is proving invaluable during the pandemic and should remain embedded in the fabric of care as health care opens back up.”
Age-Friendly Health Systems is an initiative of The John A. Hartford Foundation and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in partnership with the American Hospital Association (AHA) and the Catholic Health Association of the United States (CHA).
To read the press release, click here.
To learn more, click here.
