GERIATRIC EMERGENCY MEDICINE
Geriatric Emergency Department Accreditation: Delivering Geriatric Care Standardization SAEM PULSE | NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2019
By Nicole Tidwell
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Older adults account for 46 percent of all emergency department visits resulting in hospitalization. Approximately one out of every 10 hospital admissions are potentially avoidable, and the majority (60 percent) of those admissions are for patients 65 and older. More than likely, you care for an older adult with multiple medical problems on every shift—an older adult who is confused and trying to live at home. Does lying in bed for hours in the emergency department (ED) during your work-up, without eating or drinking, harm them? What resources do they need? These are the issues that emergency medicine physicians
struggle with every day, and the reasons why the geriatric emergency department concept was developed. EDs that are focused on improving the care of older patients can become accredited as a geriatric ED through the American College of Emergency Physician’s (ACEP’s) Geriatric Emergency Department Accreditation (GEDA) program. The accreditation is the first of its kind and is part of an effort to improve the quality and standards of emergency care provided to the nation’s older patients. The program builds upon the foundational work and support of the Gary and Mary West Health Institute and The John A. Hartford Foundation to enhance geriatric emergency care across the country.
The geriatric ED accreditation process follows a series of related efforts. In 2013, ACEP, the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine, the American Geriatrics Society, and the Emergency Nurses Association, released the Geriatric Emergency Department Guidelines, the product of two years of consensus-based collaborative