Interventions to Improve Patient Care

Yale Geriatrics faculty members have developed a number of interventions which have had a major impact on the care of older persons.

Patient Priorities Care

Patient Priorities Care helps patients and clinicians focus all decision-making and healthcare on what matters most: patients’ own health priorities. Clinicians, patients, caregivers, health system leaders, payers, and funders from across the country came together to identify the key problems facing older adults with multiple chronic conditions. The charge: to propose feasible and effective strategies for improving their care.

Fall Prevention

Fall prevention interventions have significantly decreased the rate of falling in community dwelling elderly; a fall prevention initiative in Connecticut has reduced the rate of falls and fall injuries throughout many cities and towns in the state.

Confusion Assessment Method

The Confusion Assessment Method, developed at Yale, has become the gold standard for making the diagnosis of delirium throughout the world. Risk factors for delirium have been identified and an intervention significantly decreased the development of delirium in hospitalized elderly patients.

Functional Decline and Disability

Yale faculty have done seminal work on functional decline and disability in older adults. A successful intervention has been demonstrated to prevent decline in older persons. The Yale Center for Disability will become the focus of interventions designed to prevent functional decline.

Medical Decisions

Yale faculty have studied factors which influence older persons’ medical decisions, and have demonstrated that expected outcome and treatment burden have a major impact on patient preferences.

Driving Problems

Yale faculty have long been concerned about driving problems in older persons. They have identified a number of risk factors for crashes and moving violations. They have recently demonstrated that both educational programs and physical conditioning programs can improve the driving performance of older persons.