Dive Brief:
- The increasing demand for geriatric emergency rooms is resulting in hospitals opening specialized ERs to address seniors' complex medical needs and reduce complications and readmissions.
- Elderly patients comprise up to a quarter of ED's annual visits and they often receive poor care due to time constraints and poor training, Dr. Lauren Southerland, director of geriatric emergency care at Ohio State University's Wexner Medical Center, told the Columbus Dispatch.
- A recent report by the ECRI Institute, a research and consulting firm, discovered about 50 senior ERs with 150 more in development, according to the Baltimore Sun, with price tags from $150,000 to $3.2 million.
Dive Insight:
Estimates put the number of Americans over age 65 reaching 89 million by 2050 according to FierceHealthcare. Ten thousand individuals are enrolling in Medicare every day—the so-called "silver tsunami."
Senior ERs have equipment that provides more comfort, such as thicker mattresses and trained personnel to assess fall risk, dementia, malnutrition, as well as abuse and neglect. An associate professor of emergency medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, Dr. Chris Carpenter, has written guidelines he hopes will be adopted as a model for U.S hospitals. "We can do things to make it less stressful for seniors and get better outcomes," he told the Baltimore Sun.