Chair File: Better Healthcare and Better Health for Older Adults

We all deserve safe, evidence-based healthcare focused on what matters to us as we age. The AHA is working with several partners to ensure it occurs across hospitals and health systems, ambulatory and long-term care settings, and communities. 

Ensuring quality care for all older adults is an urgent need: More than 61 million Americans are age 65 or older, and that number is projected to increase to about 95 million by 2060. People are living longer, and many older adults are managing more than one chronic disease and taking multiple medications. Many also live with uncertainty as they transition from independent living to a greater reliance on others. 

Since 2017, the AHA has partnered with The John A. Hartford Foundation and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement on the Age-Friendly Health Systems initiative. More than 6,000 care sites — hospitals and health systems as well as ambulatory care, long-term care and post-acute care settings — have been recognized as Age-Friendly Health Systems. These sites deliver care to older adults, resulting in reduced readmissions, shorter length of stay, improved patient and clinician satisfaction, and more. 

Beginning this fall, the AHA is leading its eighth AFHS Action Community, a seven-month virtual experience that guides healthcare teams in embedding the evidence-based 4Ms Framework — What Matters, Medication, Mentation and Mobility — in daily practice. Participation is free, and I encourage you to learn more and sign up. 

At the AHA Leadership Summit in July, I announced the new AHA Age-Friendly Healthcare Impact Award, presented by the AHA and sponsored by The John A. Hartford Foundation. This award recognizes hospitals and health systems that are transforming care for older adults through the 4Ms Framework. Applications are open now and due Sept. 25. 

The West Health Accelerator at AHA’s Health Research & Educational Trust is also advancing care for older adults through its Adopting Digital Tools for Better Aging Care learning collaborative. The six-month collaborative brings together hospitals and health systems to adopt EHR-enabled tools, optimize clinical workflows and implement evidence-based practices that help deliver more consistent, high-quality care to older adults.

We must ensure older adults are supported across the full continuum of care so they can age with dignity and receive respectful, high-quality and innovative care. The AHA will continue working to advance healthcare for older adults and individuals at every stage of life in communities across the country.