Programs for informal caregivers of frail elderly can be adopted by States to address some of the problems associated with an expanding and costly long-term care system. In this article, highlights are given from a 3-year study of Idaho and Arizona tax incentive programs. Characteristics of informal caregivers and elderly participants are described, and elderly participants are compared with el...

In a famous paper from the late 1970s, Robin 1 postulated his concerns about overdiagnosis and overtreatment of pulmonary embolism (PE), stating that “the emperor of embolism may have no clothes.” He was mainly concerned about overdiagnosing PE in previously healthy young women, arguing that the prior probability of PE is low in these patients, and this subsequently results in a lower positive ...

PURPOSE There is a growing consensus that quality of care for frail elders should include family and be evaluated in terms of patient-centered, family-focused care (PCFFC). Family caregivers are in a unique and sometimes sole position to evaluate such care. In the context of caring for physically frail elders, this study examined the extent to which objective burden was associated with caregive...

In reflecting on the papers presented to this years INIC conference in Tampere (the abstracts and presentations being available in this conference supplement) it is clear that we are reaching a watershed in the way researchers are beginning to think about integrated care as a scientific discipline, and the way health systems are beginning to properly embrace its principles. For example, the pol...

This article demonstrates a method for evaluating the predictive validity of nursing home pre-admission screens (PAS) by using measures of predictive validity adapted from the field of epidemiology. Our approach estimates how well as PAS performs in identifying the "who but for" population of the Medicaid home and community-based services waiver programs for the frail elderly. The methodology's...

BACKGROUND While age at death is on the rise, the number of postmortem examinations is declining and is disproportionately low among the elderly population. Research on, the subject of gender-associated pathology in the elderly is also scarce. OBJECTIVE To seek eventual gender-related differences in autopsies of elderly patients. METHODS We analyzed the data extracted from a published repor...

INTRODUCTION Interest is growing in integrated systems of care for the frail elderly. Few such systems have been both documented and evaluated in a rigorous manner. The present article provides an international review of such systems. METHODS The literature on integrated care covered the period from 1997 to 2010, inclusive. Some 2,496 citations were identified from Age Line, PsycINFO, CINAHAL...

The terms "successful aging" and "the frail elderly" are now commonly used in aging research, but biomedical researchers may be unaware of the possible unintended negative consequences of their use. A commonly used operational definition of successful aging (high cognitive and physical function, low probability of disease, and active engagement with life) reflects values not necessarily shared ...

Budget constraints, technological advances and a growing elderly population have resulted in major reforms in health care systems across Canada. This has led to fewer and smaller acute care hospitals and increasing pressure on the primary care and continuing care networks. The present system of care for the frail elderly, who are particularly vulnerable, is characterized by fragmentation of ser...

No previous studies have explored the effects of mind-body approaches on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in the frail elderly. Cognition and action are an inseparable whole during functioning. Thus, a new intervention-based approach using familiarity-based movements and a nonjudgmental approach of "cognition-action" was proposed and was tested with Tai Chi on HRQoL in frail institutional...