JAGS Special Article: Age-Friendly Care in the Veterans Health Administration - Past, Present, and Future
The Journal of American Geriatrics Society (JAGS) has released a special article highlighting lessons from the Veterans Health Administration's long history of age-friendly care.
The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is one of the nation's leading authorities and first implementers of age-friendly care in the United States. Authors Dr. Farrell and others frame a close relationship between the Age-Friendly Health Systems (AFHS) movement, launched in 2017, and the VHA's age-friendly work over the last century. They discuss the VHA's development of medical centers and clinical programs, all optimized to serve the needs of older adults.
Over the last fifty years, the VHA has developed and innovated protocols to transform specific care management guidelines, such as for ambulatory care, home and community-based services, and end-of-life care, into age-friendly processes that address the 4Ms of age-friendly care - what Matters, Medication, Mentation and Mobility.
The article discusses how these innovations developed out of historical events and movements towards age-friendly care as well as how VHA work may inform innovation in the AFHS movement.
Go to the abstract.
Read more about the VHA's Age-Friendly Health Systems Initiative.
Learn about JAHF's support of the AFHS movement.
