Age-Friendly Initiative Partnership Aims to Improve Health Care for Older Adults

Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center (PVHMC) announced that it is part of a movement to improve health care for older adults, contributing to a goal of continuing to expand and grow age-friendly care.

As part of the Age-Friendly Health Systems initiative, The John A. Hartford Foundation and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, in partnership with the American Hospital Association and the Catholic Health Association of the United States,​ are helping health care organizations implement a set of evidence-based interventions specifically designed to improve care for older adults.

Collaborative learning opportunities across the movement bring together health care teams committed to sharing data and improving together. All teams strive toward reliably implementing age-friendly best practices across hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, home health agencies and primary and specialty care settings.

PVHMC joins an international group of more than 5,200 health systems working to tailor care to patients’ goals and preferences and to deliver care that is consistently of the highest quality.

“The number of aging Americans, who often experience complex medical conditions and need a higher level of care coordination, growing at a rapid pace” said Richard E. Yochum, FACHE, President/CEO of PVHMC. “Through the Age-Friendly Health Systems initiative, we aim to work collaboratively with other institutions to improve our best practices to ensure our aging patients receive the highest quality of care and experience good health outcomes.”

The initiative is based on a series of practices focused on addressing four essential elements of care for older patients:

• What Matters: Know and align care with each older adult’s specific health outcome goals and care preferences in​clu​ding, but not limited to, end-of-life care, and across settings of care.
• Medication: If medication is necessary, use age-friendly medications that do not interfere with What Matters to the older adult, Mobility, or Mentation across settings of care.
• Mentation: Prevent, identify, treat, and manage dementia, depression, and delirium across settings of care.​
• Mobility: Ensure that older adults move safely every day in order to maintain function and do What Matters.