Older People in Acute Care Improvement programme
The Improving Care for Older People in Acute
Care workstream is a 2 year programme (ending March 2014) to
improve the care for older people in acute care. This work
focuses on 2 key areas:
- Care co-ordination – with a focus on identification and
immediate management of frailty
- Cognitive Impairment – with a focus on identification and
immediate management of delirium.
Frailty – by identifying
frail patients on admission, our aim is that those patients who
require to stay in hospital will receive timely comprehensive
geriatric assessment and input from specialist team, on the day of
admission. Appropriate and timely screening and assessment has been
shown to reduce length of stay in hospital, improve patient
experience and reduce complaints.
Delirium – older people and
people with dementia, severe illness or a hip fracture are more at
risk of delirium. Delirium is a medical emergency and carries
a high level of mortality. The prevalence of delirium in people on
medical wards in hospital is about 20% to 30%, and 10% to 50% of
people having surgery develop delirium. People who have
delirium may need to stay longer in hospital or in critical care,
have an increased incidence of dementia, have more
hospital-acquired complications, such as falls and pressure sores,
be more likely to need to be admitted to long-term care if they are
in hospital, be more likely to die. (NICE 2011)
Taking a Collaborative Approach to
Improving Care
The workstream is undertaking a collaborative
approach to engage with healthcare teams from acute hospitals
across Scotland, who will come together for a series of events and
webex calls to:
- Introduce new tools for
testing locally with the aim of improving screening for frailty and
improving the early management of delirium
- Share experience, expertise
and examples of good practice in improving care for older
people
- Build capacity and
capability for improvement
- Support local improvement
work
