When you want the best care for yourself or a loved one, oftentimes you seek out specialists for individualized treatment. For example, you’ll take your child to a pediatrician instead of a general practitioner, and you’ll see a podiatrist for foot pain. When older adults and senior citizens are concerned, medical care provided should be given equal respect and individualized attention in the same way. But the question is how to know which places will provide that?
Age-Friendly Health System is a term to distinguish organizations providing exceptional care for seniors and the elderly. The Institute for Healthcare Improvement created the designation for organizations that meet their criteria, and can therefore provide expertly designed care for older adults, allowing them to address each patient’s needs, values, preferences, and beliefs as they age.
Aging is a complicated process that impacts all parts of the human body. Seniors necessarily require comprehensive care that fully considers all their specific needs, concerns, and future challenges. As we age, we often accumulate more conditions, injuries, and diseases that have the potential to cause negative health effects down the road. This includes dramatic and dangerous chronic health conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, cognitive decline and dementia, as well as things less talked about but no less dangerous and debilitating, such as mobility issues, social isolation, and malnutrition.
The traditional approach to medicine and treatment is to focus on one condition at a time. Oftentimes, each condition is treated separately by different specialists focused on their own specific areas of expertise, and these specialists might not all necessarily be coordinating care, or considering causes and comorbidities outside the scope of their practice. If all the various specialists, such as cardiologists working on heart disease, nephrologists working on diabetes, and so forth, are not working on the same page, then it’s very likely they might miss something.
Symptoms from one condition may in fact be related to another condition, rather than the two complaints being separate concerns. And most seniors take at least, if not more, medications each day, and with every separate medicine, the greater the chance they can interact or cause undesired side effects, such as higher risk of falls. Another factor that can make caring for older adults more difficult is that cognitive decline or dementia may make it hard for seniors to communicate their symptoms, as well as becoming unable to absorb and understand information on their conditions and treatment plans.
Our health system generally focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of ailments, each of them considered separate ideas which mostly leaves the body uncared for as a holistic entity. This can also have the effect of sidelining the wishes of patients themselves. Age-Friendly Health Systems keep in mind what is important to each individual patient, allowing them to continue aging through their twilight years and continue their highest living standard and quality of life, in accordance with their goals and values. The framework of Age-Friendly Health Systems shape health care to the needs of seniors, rather than forcing seniors to adapt to an unbalanced model of health care.