The Veterans Administration (VA) https://www.va.gov has launched a Geriatric Emergency Department initiative within all of the VA’s 18 Veterans Integrated Service Networks.
The initiative uses a standardized, comprehensive care model to help Veterans with specialized geriatric emergency care. The Geriatric Emergency Department treats older Veterans with complex conditions, catches unmet care needs, and develops teamwork strategies throughout the VA to better coordinated ED and follow-up care.
The VA has partnered with the American College of Emergency Physicians, The John A. Harford Foundation, and the West Health Institute to ensure elderly Veterans continue to obtain the best possible emergency care and person-centered health services. These partnerships aims to establish 70 VA EDs as geriatric EDs to be eligible for accreditation in alignment with ACEP’s GED Accreditation.
The VA promotes and augments transitions of care through an interdisciplinary team approach from various services throughout facilities. This is achieved by connecting social work and VA home/community resources, geriatric education for emergency department staff. So far, there are 16 VA sites between levels 1 and 3 with level 1 accreditation being the highest achievable and most rigorous level.