The Age-Friendly Health Systems movement recorded a significant achievement when the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently added an Age-Friendly Hospital Measure as part of the fiscal year 2025 Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) rule.
Since the Age-Friendly Health Systems movement launched in 2017, nearly 5,000 care settings have been recognized as Age-Friendly Health System Participants, benefiting more than 3.75 million older adults who have received age-friendly care. Age-Friendly Health Systems is an initiative of The John A. Hartford Foundation and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), in partnership with the American Hospital Association (AHA) and the Catholic Health Association of the United States (CHA).
The new measure, developed by the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) in partnership with the American College of Surgeons and IHI, clarifies goals for those who work with older patients and incorporates aspects of the ACEP Geriatric Emergency Department Accreditation (GEDA) framework into care delivery.
Among other things, the measure calls for hospitals to have protocols in place to move older patients out of the emergency department within eight hours of arrival or three hours of the decision to admit.
“The Age-Friendly Hospital Measure reshapes the way we care for older patients,” said Aisha Terry, M.D., M.P.H., president of ACEP, in a statement. “ACEP is proud to collaborate with healthcare leaders at the highest levels to drive meaningful change that helps physicians, care teams and patients.”
The new quality measure builds on the success of the Age-Friendly Health Systems movement, which popularized the 4Ms Framework (What Matters, Medication, Mentation, Mobility). The measure has five domains – eliciting patient healthcare goals, responsible medication management, frailty screening and intervention, social vulnerability, and age-friendly care leadership – that cover all four elements of the 4Ms Framework.
“This measure is directly informed by emergency physicians’ experience and shows health systems the way to build a better and safer environment for older patients,” said Kevin Biese, M..D, M.A.T., director of the division of geriatric emergency medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, and chair of the ACEP GEDA Board of Governors, in a statement. “Encouraging facilities to adopt ACEP-supported best practices can make a difference in the lives of millions of vulnerable patients.”
“Adoption of this measure marks a significant and much-needed shift in how we provide health care to the aging population,” said Kedar Mate, M.D., president and CEO of IHI, in a statement. “It is also an inflection point for the Age-Friendly Health Systems movement, which will now be able to leverage the power and impact of policy and payment models to scale 4Ms care.”
