NEJM Catalyst Special Issue: Age-Friendly Health Systems—Implementation and Impact of the 4Ms Framework
NEJM Catalyst Innovations in Care Delivery has published a special issue on Age-Friendly Health Systems (AFHS), with a focus on assessing the implementation and impact of the 4Ms Framework (What Matters, Medication, Mentation and Mobility).
Sponsored by JAHF, the special issue includes 12 articles, case studies and research reports that highlight important benefits realized from AFHS implementation efforts to date, as well as challenges that are critical to address for the AFHS movement to fully deliver on its goals. The articles can be accessed freely via the individual links below by creating a NEJM user account.
The guest editor for the issue is Julia Adler-Milstein, PhD, of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), which is home to the AFHS Research Network. Dr. Adler-Milstein's editorial, "After Widespread Adoption of Age-Friendly Care Principles, Maturation Is the Next Step," summarizes the issue's contents and concludes that "measurement must move beyond documenting completion of 4Ms assessments to linking care processes with meaningful clinical actions and person-centered outcomes."
The issue also includes a Viewpoint article by JAHF's Rani Snyder, Susannah Bernstein, Marcus Escobedo and Leslie Pelton on "Age-Friendly Care: A Timely Health System Strategy to Improve Cost and Quality." The authors argue that "for health system leaders, age-friendly care is a pragmatic path to value."
Research articles:
- Adherence to the Age-Friendly Care 4Ms Framework and Association with Reduced Acute Care Utilization by Kathryn Agarwal, Houston Methodist
- Scaling the Age-Friendly Care 4Ms Framework Across 26 Midwest Hospitals by Suzanne Ryer, Advocate Health
- A Research and Implementation Roadmap from the VA’s National State-of-the-Art Conference on Age-Friendly Care for Veterans by Andrea Wershof Schwartz, VA Boston Healthcare System, Mass General Brigham and Harvard Medical School
- An Implementation Maturity Survey to Support Systemwide Age-Friendly Care by Dori Cross, University of Minnesota School of Public Health
- Inpatient Age-Friendly 4Ms Care and Outcomes in an Urban Academic Medical Center by Lauren Gleason, University of Chicago Department of Medicine
- Implementing the Age-Friendly 4Ms-Plus Framework in a Vulnerable Population at a Safety-Net Hospital by Ugochi Ohuabunwa, Emory University School of Medicine
- Age-Friendly Health System Recognition and Its Association with Improved Clinical Outcome Measures by Mara Rosenberg, UCSF Department of Medicine
- Bringing Age-Friendly Care to Rural Communities: The MobileMOC Interprofessional Mobile Health Model by Kristina Wick, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
- Moving Beyond the Checklist: A Three-Tier Model for Integrating Geriatrics Expertise into the CMS Age-Friendly Era by Martine Sanon, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
- Wide Embrace of the Age-Friendly Care 4Ms Framework, by Julia Adler-Milstein, and UCSF Department of Medicine
Read the special issue.
Visit NEJM Catalyst's website.
Learn more about the AFHS initiative.
Learn more about the AFHS Research Network.
Learn more about JAHF's support of AFHS.
Learn more about JAHF's support of the AFHS Research Network.
