ACS Program Cuts Surgical Deaths and Improves Care for Older Adults, Studies Show

Implementing the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Geriatric Surgery Verification (GSV) program can reduce rates of death after surgery and increase the percentage of patients with documentation standards, such as advanced care directives, according to two studies being presented at the ACS Clinical Congress 2024 in San Francisco, California.

New Studies Suggest Social Isolation Is a Risk Factor for Dementia in Older Adults, Point to Ways to Reduce Risk

In two studies using nationally representative data from the National Health and Aging Trends Study gathered on thousands of Americans, researchers from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health have significantly added to evidence that social isolation is a substantial risk factor for dementia in community-dwelling (noninstitutionalized) older adults, and identified technology as an effective way to intervene.

Are older women being over-screened for cervical cancer?

Analysis showed that in 2019 more than 1.3 million women received cervical cancer screening-associated services, such as a Pap test, colposcopy and other cervical procedures, after age 65. While these services cost more than $83 million, the researchers concluded they were of “unclear clinical appropriateness.”

There’s a Better Way to Detect High-Risk Medications in Older Adults with Cancer According to New Study in JNCCN

Gerontology researchers teamed up with hematologic-oncology investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to look at the association between older patients with blood cancers who were taking multiple medications and their corresponding frailty. They also created a new scale based on a list of Potentially Inappropriate Medications (PIMs) from the NCCN Guidelines® for Older Adult Oncology—called the Geriatric Oncology-Potentially Inappropriate Medications (GO-PIMs) Scale—and found it to be more effective at predicting frailty than conventional methods.

Hackensack Meridian Hackensack University Medical Center Recognized as 2021 Age-Friendly Health System – Committed to Care Excellence

Hackensack Meridian Hackensack University Medical Center was recently recognized by Age-Friendly Health Systems, 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), Hackensack Meridian Hackensack University Medical Center is among the health systems in the country implementing age-friendly health care.