CMS Approves New 2025 Age-Friendly Hospital Measure
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has announced its FY2025 Inpatient Prospective Payment Systems final rule that includes a new Age Friendly Hospital Measure. Hospitals can take advantage of JAHF-supported initiatives to help meet this new measure.
Beginning in 2025, hospitals that participate in Medicare’s Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting (IQR) Program will be required to report on whether hospitals have protocols in place to: 1) elicit patient health care goals, 2) responsibly manage medications, 3) implement frailty screening and intervention (including for cognition and mobility), 4) assess social vulnerability (e.g. social isolation, caregiver stress, elder abuse) and 5) designate age-friendly leadership.
Hospitals that choose not to participate in the IQR program, which now includes this mandatory measure, face a significant reduction in their annual Medicare payment update. The public will be able to see how hospitals report on this measure through CMS’s Care Compare website.
The Age Friendly Hospital Measure is based in part on the 4Ms Framework for age-friendly care (What Matters, Medication, Mentation and Mobility) and standards of surgical and emergency department care developed as part of JAHF-funded initiatives.
The FY2025 Inpatient Prospective Payment Systems final rule has a detailed explanation of the measure starting on p. 1424 (and includes a table, The Age Friendly Hospital Measure’s Five Domain Attestations, on p. 1428).
Hospitals can be successful in meeting this new measure by participating in the following programs:
- Age-Friendly Health Systems (AFHS)
Health care teams can join no-cost, 7-month learning collaboratives to learn to implement the 4Ms Framework. The American Hospital Association will facilitate the next Action Community beginning in September. Join now. - Geriatric Surgery Verification (GSV)
Hospitals that meet standards for age-friendly surgical care can be verified through this program of the American College of Surgeons. Teams can receive guidance through an Implementation Course. - Geriatric Emergency Department Accreditation (GEDA)
Emergency departments that meet standards for age-friendly ED care can receive accreditation from the American College of Emergency Physicians. The related Geriatric Emergency Department Collaborative provides training and education on standards related to the GEDA program. - Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC)
Tools and Training include online courses to help clinicians clarify patient goals of care, scripts and prompts, curated toolkits to assess frailty, cognition and function, clinical games to learn essential de-prescribing skills and more. - Patient Priorities Care (PPC)
PPC aligns care among all clinicians with what matters most to their patients. It recognizes that patients are the experts in what they want to achieve from their healthcare, while clinicians are the experts in how to get them there.
Read the CMS Age-Friendly Hospital Measure.
Explore the Age Friendly Hospital Measure's Five Domains Attestations.
Read JAHF's press release.
Learn more about JAHF's co-support of the AFHS, GSV, GEDA/GEDC.
