A comprehensive geriatric care assessment will help to determine medical, functional, and psychosocial problems and capabilities in an elderly person who may be at risk for functional decline.
The assessment is designed to:
• Evaluate the multiple problems of seniors
• Develop coordinated care plans to focus interventions on individual problems
• Assess seniors’ personal resources and strengths
• Determine service needs
Once completed, a geriatric care assessment can lead to:
• Improved health outcomes
• Prevention of the onset of disability
• Early recognition of health changes
• Improved quality of life
• Savings on healthcare costs
• Keeping seniors out of the emergency room
• Targeting individualized rehabilitation needs
• Informative planning for daily services to increase safety
• Discovery of early-stage disease and determination of senior’s ability to care for himself or herself
• Discovery of malnutrition
• Determination of fall risks
Examples of seniors that benefited from an assessment:
• A senior woman was living alone and cooking for herself. She had ample food in her cupboards but was steadily losing weight. Before a care team stepped in to determine if there was a disease to explain the weight loss, a malnutrition assessment was performed. The assessment revealed that the patient was not taking in enough calories per day because she often did not feel like preparing meals, which also indicated a level of depression. The patient’s physician was notified and a home caregiver was hired to provide meals and companionship.
• A frail elderly male was asked to take an assessment measuring his gait and balance.
His low score on the assessment clearly indicated he was at high risk for a fall. Steps were taken to reduce his risk of falls inside and outside the home. Without these changes, he would have stood a high chance of experiencing a devastating fall within the year and ending up in the emergency room.
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