Gerastenia panels in the practice of general/family medicine doctors

Abstract:

Providing the adequate health care for elderly patients has become significant challenge because of an increasing number of older people and because of the complexity of care each older patient should get. The time pressure to perform these tasks is increasing and it is necessary to take advantage of all opportunities to provide more time for doctors and other medical staff to provide the best possible information and to help the patient in a qualitative way. The data collected during this process should be stored in a way they enables a high quality comparison with other institutions and helps in planning organization of health care in future. We have developed a tool that provides a reliable help for the practicing physicians to approach each patient in a structured, standardized way and to collect the data on functional status that enable efficient help and in the same time highly usable comparison with others. Planning future health care will also be facilitated.

Key words:
assessment of functional status; frail older adults; gerastenia; panels; sarcopenia