"Emergency Rooms Get a Makeover for the Elderly" - Beth Howard
ERs designed for seniors are being created across the country. Visits to emergency rooms by people over age 65 rose by more than 27 percent from 2005 to 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mount Sinai Health System has a geriatric ER, with a goal to save the patients from being admitted to the hospital, where they face a greater risk for hospital-acquired infections, delirium and falls. Even short hospitalizations can have detrimental long-term effects. “Older patients tend to not bounce back as well if they’re admitted to the hospital the way a younger person would have,” said Denise Nassisi, MD, director of the geriatric emergency department at The Mount Sinai Hospital. “They will often lose one of their activities of daily living, perhaps irreversibly.”
— Denise Nassisi, MD, Associate Professor, Emergency Medicine, General Internal Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Director, Geriatric Emergency Department, The Mount Sinai Hospital