Identification and team-based interprofessional management of hospitalized vulnerable older adults

Extended hospital stays and complications are common among older adults and may lead to morbidity and loss of independence. Specialized geriatric units have been shown to improve outcomes but, with the growing numbers of older adults, may be difficult to scale to meet needs.

The purpose was to evaluate a quality improvement initiative that redesigned unit-based workflow and trained interprofessional teams on general medical/surgical units to create care plans for vulnerable older adults using principles of comprehensive geriatric assessment and team management.

The evaluation included a cluster randomized controlled trial of 10 medical/surgical units and intention-to-treat analysis of all patients meeting risk screening criteria.

N = 1,384, median age = 80.9 years, and 53.5% female. Mean difference in observed vs. expected length of stay was 1.03 days shorter (p = .006); incidence of complications (odds ratio [OR] = 0.45; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.21-0.98) and transfer to intensive care (OR = 0.45; 95% CI = 0.25-0.79) lower among patients admitted to intervention units; incidence of discharge to institutional care was higher (OR = 1.43; 95% CI = 1.06-1.93). Mortality during hospitalization (OR = 0.64; 95% CI = 0.37-1.11) did not differ between groups.

Reorganizing general medical/surgical units to provide team-based interprofessional care can improve outcomes among hospitalized older adults.