Age-Friendly Health Systems aim to follow an essential set of evidence-based practices; cause no harm; and align with what matters to older adults and their caregivers.​ This Issue Brief provides background on the need and an update on a new movement that seeks to transform how our healthcare system approaches the care of older adults.

​Healthcare is becoming increasingly burdensome. People with chronic conditions and their caregivers spend an average of two hours per day on healthcare tasks. Each office visit, diagnostic test, or procedure can consume up to a half day when travel and waiting time are considered.

Older adults, 60 to 70 percent of whom have multiple chronic conditions, are the major recipients of healthcare. Much of this care, which is expensive for patients, health systems, and payers, is also potentially harmful and of uncertain or modest benefit because older adults, particularly those with multiple chronic conditions, have not been included in the clinical trials that determine benefit and harms.

Treating individual diseases without considering each person’s overall health status and life situation can result in conflicting recommendations from treating clinicians and can make co-existing conditions worse.

The devastating effect of COVID-19 in nursing homes and among underserved older adults, particularly people of color, has also raised awareness of the need to ensure age-friendly and safe care for those in times and situations of greatest need.

Health systems do not always focus on the issues and outcomes that matter most to older adults. Individuals seek healthcare not merely to improve disease-specific outcomes (such as blood pressure or blood sugar control) but to be able to do what they want in their daily lives.

Physical, cognitive, psychosocial, and social functioning are the health outcomes that best reflect whether people are getting what they want from their healthcare. Unfortunately, these patient-centered functional outcomes do not appear in electronic health records (EHRs), generally do not determine payment or quality, and are largely ignored in most healthcare settings.

This unfortunate disconnect is detrimental to all patients, and particularly older adults. The movement to make health systems age-friendly exists to address this disconnect.

Read the full article about health systems for aging populations by Mary Tinetti, M.D. at Grantmakers in Aging.