UT Southwestern's nationally ranked geriatric care receives international exemplar status - UT Southwestern

DALLAS – Oct. 24, 2022 – UT Southwestern Medical Center has received exemplar presumption by the Nurses Improving Care for Healthsystem Elders (NICHE) – an planetary designation that indicates a hospital's committedness to achieving the highest level of geriatric attraction excellence.

“Taking fantabulous attraction of older adults requires coordination and teamwork crossed disciplines and professions, and this designation is simply a testament to the enactment relation our nurses person taken successful this ngo arsenic good arsenic to our team’s ongoing committedness to present prime attraction to each older big who enters our Medical Center,” said Thomas Dalton, M.D., Associate Professor of Internal Medicine astatine UTSW’s Mildred Wyatt & Ivor P. Wold Center for Geriatric Care, which provides some superior geriatric aesculapian attraction and specialty consultation to patients property 80 and older. “This squad works time successful and time retired to not lone instrumentality evidence-based and person-centered practices but besides to innovate and dispersed those practices crossed the UT Southwestern Health System.”

UT Southwestern is ranked as the nation’s 26th apical programme successful geriatrics by U.S. News & World Report and has been recognized arsenic a subordinate successful Age-Friendly Health Systems, a question to present safe, reliable, high-quality wellness attraction successful each mounting based connected what matters astir to older adults arsenic individuals. UT Southwestern has aggregate programs aimed specifically astatine providing patient-centric attraction and acquisition for older patients and processing coordinated, multidisciplinary attraction plans that absorption connected the implicit individual, including societal and intelligence issues arsenic good arsenic aesculapian conditions.

Criteria for the NICHE designation see expanded patient-centric geriatric attraction services to conscionable the needs of older patients and their families, supporting radical with disabilities, improving orthopedic country outcomes, identifying and managing delirium, and strengthening assemblage engagement.

Specialty attraction astatine UT Southwestern for older adults includes:

• UT Southwestern’s Acute Care for Elders (ACE) specialty unit astatine William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital, an interdisciplinary squad that brings unneurotic the expertise of specialists successful each aspects of geriatric attraction to assistance older adults sphere and reclaim their relation and independency aft hospitalization. UT Southwestern has the lone ACE portion successful the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Research shows that patients who are cared for successful an ACE portion person improved outcomes, including:
  • Better functional and cognitive results
  • Fewer hospital-acquired complications
  • Reduced wellness attraction costs
  • Shorter infirmary stays
  Less likelihood to determination to a nursing location pursuing hospitalization ACE units person been developed to specifically code issues specified arsenic cognitive decline, delirium, functional decline, and unit ulcers; and see interventions specified arsenic medicine reviews, nutritional counseling, carnal therapy, slumber hygiene, and readying for attraction aft discharge.
• The UT Southwestern Perioperative Optimization of Senior Health (POSH) Program, offered by the Division of Geriatric Medicine and the Departments of Surgery and Anesthesiology and Pain Management, provides broad valuation of older adults who are readying to acquisition surgery. Specialists measure older adults earlier country to expect immoderate hazard of adverse postoperative events and to supply an optimization program to debar complications and amended outcomes. After the procedure, UTSW POSH attraction squad members proceed to supply consultative absorption of aggregate conditions, marque recommendations for delirium prevention, and assistance with a harmless modulation retired of the hospital.
• UT Southwestern’s Care of the Vulnerable Elderly (COVE) home-based superior attraction program provides an interdisciplinary attack to the attraction of susceptible older adults with aggregate chronic conditions. COVE is staffed by precocious signifier NPs and doctors who are specially trained successful geriatrics arsenic good arsenic a objective societal worker, a objective coordinator, and a registered caregiver with geriatric expertise. In the home, the squad tin supply astir immoderate benignant of attraction performed by a clinic. This includes carnal exams, vaccinations, phlebotomy, EKGs, cortisone associated injections, and intelligence wellness screenings. Advances successful mobile instrumentality specified arsenic ultrasound person made it imaginable to bash some valuation and absorption successful the location setting. COVE serves patients who are implicit 65, who necessitate assistance successful astatine slightest 1 facet of idiosyncratic care, who person a chronic information and necessitate assistance traveling to aesculapian appointments.
• The Southwestern Aging and Geriatrics Education Program (UT SAGE) is simply a broad inaugural designed to summation geriatrics acquisition done an innovative program that emphasizes diligent information and patient-centered attraction for susceptible older adults. UT SAGE was created done a generous assistance from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation with beardown organization enactment from crossed UT Southwestern.

“UT Southwestern has made important investments successful the infrastructure of supportive attraction needed that tin not lone easiness question and entree burdens for seniors and aged patients and their families, but importantly amended surgical and orthopedic outcomes, assistance negociate comorbidities including heart, lung, and gastrointestinal issues, and code the afloat spectrum of neuropsychiatric attraction for dementia and different issues,” said Craig Rubin, M.D., Distinguished Teaching Professor and Chief of the Division of Geriatric Medicine, who holds the Seymour Eisenberg Distinguished Professorship successful Geriatric Medicine, Margaret and Trammell Crow Distinguished Chair successful Alzheimer's and Geriatric Research, Walsdorf Professorship successful Geriatrics Research, and the Sinor/Pritchard (Katy Sinor and Kay Pritchard) Professorship successful Medical Education Honoring Donald W. Seldin, M.D. “That infrastructure has the added vantage of reducing hospitalizations and readmissions, which further helps trim the full outgo of care.”

About UT Southwestern Medical Center

UT Southwestern, 1 of the nation’s premier world aesculapian centers, integrates pioneering biomedical probe with exceptional objective attraction and education. The institution’s module has received six Nobel Prizes, and includes 24 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 18 members of the National Academy of Medicine, and 14 Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigators. The full-time module of much than 2,900 is liable for groundbreaking aesculapian advances and is committed to translating science-driven probe rapidly to caller objective treatments. UT Southwestern physicians supply attraction successful much than 80 specialties to much than 100,000 hospitalized patients, much than 360,000 exigency country cases, and oversee astir 4 cardinal outpatient visits a year.