Compliance with social and safety recommendations in an outpatient comprehensive geriatric assessment program

A unique contribution of a comprehensive outpatient geriatric assessment is its focus on social and safety issues in the frail elderly. The impact of such programs depends on the caregiver and/or patient complying with safety and social recommendations offered by the assessment team. Compliance in this setting has not been previously described.

A telephone survey was conducted of self-reported compliance in 124 frail geriatric patients with a high prevalence of dementia 3-21 months after completing a comprehensive geriatric assessment program at the University of California, San Diego, Medical Center.

The social and safety recommendations constituted 52.8% of all the recommendations offered. The overall compliance rate (total number of safety and social recommendations followed/total number offered x 100) was 50.2% (95% CI: 43.7-56.6). Highest compliance was achieved with recommendations to complete a prior directive for health care (80.6%) and to wear a medic-alert bracelet (57.5%). Patients complied poorly with recommendations to change a living situation (36.2%). Analysis of variance showed compliance to increase with time between the assessment and survey. Stratifying for time, we found higher compliance in patients with greater impairment in functional or cognitive status. Most noncompliance was due to disagreement with the recommendations offered or failure to implement acceptable recommendations.

Compliance with social and safety recommendations offered in a comprehensive geriatric assessment program approximates compliance observed in other clinical settings. In this setting compliance increases over time. When controlled for time, impairment in functional or cognitive status is associated with greater compliance.