Bringing Geriatrics to Primary Care

In partnership with the John A. Hartford Foundation and the Institute for Healthcare Quality Improvement, the CGWEP is engaged with promoting the 4M’s of Age-Friendly Healthcare Systems at 3 CCRCs. The 4M’s include promoting mobility, safe medications, addressing mentation and paying attention to what matters to older adults. Helping clinics quantify, document and improve these 4M’s will ensure more appropriate, patient centered care with the potential to save healthcare dollars.

Working with Emergency Medical Services

The CGWEP also trained a special team of EMS workers in Orange County on falls prevention. The Orange County Department on Aging has partnered with the CGWEP and EMS to create a service pattern network under which frequent fallers who call EMS have additional follow up. After the training EMS workers conduct a second home visit and perform a multifactorial falls risk assessment.

Patients who screen positive receive follow up from a Case Manager at the Department on Aging. This person facilitates referrals and access to community services. This project not only represents another falls prevention intervention at another point on the service continuum but is also a change in service coordination and patterns linking agencies and health care providers in a much more coordinated system.

The 4Ms

As more Americans reach the age of 65, creating create Age-Friendly Health Systems becomes increasingly important. Below are downloadable resources covering The 4Ms: What Matters, Medication, Mind, and Mobility.

• GWEP UNC 4Ms: Better care for older adults (English)
• GWEP UNC 4Ms Poster (Spanish)
• GWEP UNC 4Ms: The 4Ms are all connected (English)
• GWEP UNC 4Ms: Las 4Ms están todas conectadas (Spanish)
• A Case Study: Spreading the 4Ms and Becoming an Age-Friendly Health System Practice

For more information on our research projects or to involve your doctor’s office, retirement home or community group, email CGWEP@med.unc.edu.