Reducing older patients' reliance on the emergency department

Older adults tend to avoid mental health services and rely on hospital emergency departments for medicalization of these conditions. An intervention was designed for use in emergency departments to refer older adult patients with mental and social health problems to appropriate services within the hospital and community. Most of the patients in the study used the services to which they were referred; further, the intervention was found to decrease repeat utilization of the emergency department. Social work practice and policy implications of the findings are also discussed.