To reduce the time elderly patients spend recovering in the hospital, UF Health Shands Hospital launched a new program focused on those 70 and older.
The Acute Care for the Elderly program, or ACE, began Monday. Acute care is shorter-term treatment for an injury or illness, like pneumonia, said Dr. Laurence Solberg, the chief of the Division of Geriatric Medicine at Shands.
In addition to decreasing the length of hospital stays and rate of readmission, the program aims to increase the quality of patient care and save money.
As of Tuesday, Solberg said the program has about 10 patients.
The program saves money for the hospital by more accurately using hospital resources and reducing unnecessary testing or treatments, he said.
“As we age, our bodies change,” he said. “When we get older, the way that we break down and handle drugs, medications, is very different. And so, the same dose that may be safe in a younger person, may be inappropriate in an older person.”
Studies done in other hospitals implementing similar programs predict about $500,000 to $1 million in savings, he said.
Solberg said older patients have lessened physical and cognitive abilities, which impacts how they are able to recover.
“A lot of times, in the rapid assessment that we do in the hospital, those kinds of nuances get left behind,” he said.
Planning for the program began in March after David Guzick, the senior vice president for health affairs at UF, said he wanted something at Shands that catered to the elderly.
The care program was launched in one area of the hospital, internal medicine, to begin with. The area was selected because it has the highest average rate of admitted elderly patients over the last year, Solberg said.
“We take the standard of care, and then we add the ACE unit to it,” he said.
Solberg said Shands has been building its geriatric focus and, for the last two years, it has been a top-50 rated geriatrics program in the U.S. News and World Report.
“We’re very proud of that, and, in building our geriatrics faculty, we saw this as an opportunity to do more for the older population,” he said.
Dr. Marco Pahor, the director of the UF Institute on Aging, said the hospital may have upfront costs from hiring more physicians, but the program ultimately has cost benefits for the hospital and the health of the people admitted.
He said the elderly typically have more diseases and need many medications, which creates a more complex treatment process.
The program team will meet every day to discuss patients, he said.
“It’s a team approach versus a single approach,” he said.
Dr. Jacobo Hincapie-Echeverri, the director of inpatient and ACE at UF Health, said the first few days of the program have been hectic.
“It puts more responsibility on my shoulders, but I’ve noticed improvements in how we discuss patients,” he said.
