Improving Healthcare Outcomes for Senior Citizens
American lifespans have increased exponentially over the past century, and with people living longer lives and elderly populations growing at a more rapid pace, finding ways to provide quality healthcare for these individuals is going to become all the more important.
“With the Baby Boomer and Generation X groups getting older each day, the country is facing the reality that by 2025, one quarter of the workforce will be above 55,” write the experts at Western Governors University. “This aging of workforce means a few things for the country, from political to economic impacts. But perhaps the largest impact is healthcare…There are thousands and millions of more people, living longer than ever before. Similarly, 5 million less children die before age five now, compared to thirty years ago. This all means that there are more people living, and more healthcare requirements.”
The problem doesn’t only lie in the fact that Americans are living longer. They’re also, generally speaking, more sick. The CDC recently noted that the number of individuals suffering from Alzheimer’s would double by the year 2060, and the rise of chronic illness affects nearly half of all adults in the U.S. Seniors are also more likely to experience macular degeneration and life threatening dental problems. This inevitably puts a strain on an already overburdened and understaffed healthcare system.
Things being as they are, older adults are often the first victims of a healthcare system that is unprepared to undertake the amount of patients it currently must care for.
“Seniors often have numerous medical conditions and are especially vulnerable to the negative effects of low-quality healthcare,” note the experts at the RAND Corporation, a research institution that develops solutions to public policy challenges. “The mix of conditions older patients face includes diseases, syndromes, and psychological impairments. This variety can make measuring quality of care for older patients a very complex undertaking.”
As it stands currently, the healthcare industry is going to have to make a number of changes in order to care for the growing number of elderly patients.
“Today’s primary care physicians are often overwhelmed by the complex needs of patients with multiple chronic health challenges, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, arthritis and more,” said Chad Boult, MD, MPH, MBA, a professor of Health Policy Management at John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “Current medical training often does not prepare physicians to provide the comprehensive support that these patients require.”
All is not lost, however. Through his research with co-author G. Darryl Wieland, PhD, MPH, the pair identified a number of processes that can improve how the healthcare system cares for patients, especially those who are elderly. The processes include:
- Creating comprehensive patient assessments that include a complete review of all medical, psychosocial, lifestyle, and patient values
- Creation and implementation of an evidenced-based plan of care that addresses all of the patient’s health-related needs
- Communication and coordination with all who provide care for the patient in question
- Promotion of the patient’s (and their caregiver’s) engagement in their own healthcare
In addition, they identified models of care that have the greatest potential to improve the effectiveness of healthcare for geriatric patients, which addresses the required complexity of care. Most models that are successful, they argue, include a comprehensive and proactive team-based approach to healthcare, which addresses health holistically. It also includes community-based resources and more access to information to those who are helping to take care of the elderly on a day-to-day basis — whether they’re living in a care facility, or being taken care of by a family member.
This kind of high quality healthcare needs to become the norm in the United States, not a rare exception.
“We need to ensure that individual needs are addressed and patients, families and physicians are armed with condition-specific information and assessment tools to improve these deficits in care,” argues Robin Hertz, Ph.D., a Pfizer epidemiologist. “We need to ensure that individual needs are addressed and patients, families and physicians are armed with condition-specific information and assessment tools to improve these deficits in care. Educating consumers about the right questions to ask of their medical providers is a powerful first step in increasing the quality of care for our nation’s vulnerable elderly.”
Now more than ever, it’s important that those in the American healthcare system work to begin to address problems present in senior care before patients and their families suffer from an overburdened and unprepared system.
