Background
Older trauma injury patients had improved recovery after we implemented routine geriatric consultation for patients ≥ age 65 at a level-1 academic trauma center. The intervention aimed to improve quality of geriatric care. However, the specific care processes that improved are unknown.
Study Design
Prospective observation comparing medical care after (December 2007-November 2009) versus before (December 2006-November 2007) implementation of the geriatric consult-based intervention. To measure quality-of-care (QOC) we used 33 previously-validated care-process quality indicators (QIs) from the Assessing the Care of Vulnerable Elders (ACOVE) study, measured by review of medical records for 76 Geriatric Consult [GC] versus 71 control group patients. As pre-specified subgroup analyses, we aggregated QIs by type: geriatric (e.g., delirium screening) versus non-geriatric condition-based care (e.g., thrombosis prophylaxis) and compared QI scores by type of care. Last, we aggregated QI scores into overall, geriatric, and non-geriatric QOC scores for each patient (# QIs passed/# QIs eligible), and compared patient-level QOC for the GC versus control group, adjusting for age, gender, ethnicity, comorbidity, and injury severity.
Results
63% of the GC versus 11% of the control group patients received a geriatric consultation. We evaluated 2505 QIs overall (1664 geriatric-type and 841 non-geriatric QIs). In general, fewer geriatric-type QIs were passed than non-geriatric QIs (71% vs 81%, p<.001). We provided better overall-QOC to the GC (77%) than control group patients (73%, p<.05). However, the difference was not statistically significant after multivariable adjustment (p=.08). We improved geriatric-QOC for the GC (74%) compared to the control group (68%, p<.01), a difference that was significant after multivariable adjustment (p=.01).
Conclusion
Geriatricians and surgeons can collaboratively improve geriatric QOC for older trauma patients.