Geriatric Care Models

The Importance of Geriatric Care Models

Healthcare is undergoing a value-based transformation. Value-driven healthcare strives to improve access to healthcare, to improve the patient’s experience and quality of care, and to moderate healthcare costs. Value-based purchasing drives quality metrics and can serve as an important lever for changes in healthcare delivery. 

Geriatric patients consume a disproportionate share of healthcare resources. Estimates from the US suggest that 50% of healthcare costs are attributed to 5% of the population characterized as hi-risk, hi-need patients. The high-need population is characterized by heavy healthcare utilization and having functional self-care limitations. In addition to clinical needs, the high-need population also has behavioral, functional, and social needs.

Program targeting for added services for high-risk populations, and focusing service resources to needs makes enormous sense. We are in the early stages of understanding how to identify appropriate patients and provide them the right intensity and mix of services. Innovative geriatric care models which demonstrate improved outcomes in health and well-being, care utilization, and cost moderation can be scaled to enhance care generally. Successful care models can involve the service setting, care delivery, and organizational culture. Focused management of high-need and frequent utilizers is critical, and may include enhanced primary care, transitional and integrated care across settings, new techniques for patient monitoring, inter-professional teamfunction, and continuous outcome assessment utilizing multiple data sources. The delivery transformation stimulated by value-based purchasing is forcing healthcare systems to evaluate the effects of different components of service along the continuum of care.

Potential contributors to this special edition of Geriatrics may include investigators and participants in innovative models of care such as accountable care organizations, advanced alternative payment models, transitions of care models, telehealth programs, patient-centered medical homes, acute care for elderly units, early mobility and healthy aging programs, medication reconciliation, and quality assessment and performance improvement (QAPI) programs. Submissions with data and analyses are particularly welcome. Additionally, thoughtful descriptive proposals of data analytics and continuous feedback to clinicians, identification of hi-need patients, improving the cultural environment and attitudes regarding aging and society, health policy concerns, and successful team-based and collaborative care models are welcome.

Dear Colleagues,

I am serving as Guest Editor for a Special Issue of the journal Geriatrics (http://www.mdpi.com/journal/geriatrics, ISSN 2308-3417) on the subject of "Geriatric Care Models". Innovative geriatric care models which demonstrate improved outcomes in health and well-being, care utilization, and cost moderation can be scaled to enhance care generally. Successful care models can involve the service setting, care delivery, and organizational culture. It is my pleasure to invite you to submit an invited feature article on the topic of Geriatric Care Models. The manuscript may be either a full paper or a communication based on your own research in this area, or may be a focused review article on some aspect of the subject. Please note that for your contribution, all article processing charges will be *waived*.

Geriatrics is fully open access. Open access (unlimited and free access by readers) increases publicity and promotes more frequent citations, as indicated by several studies. Open access is supported by the authors and their institutes.

The submission deadline is *30 June 2018*. You may send your manuscript now or up until the deadline. If you require an extension, just advise us of a more realistic deadline. Submitted papers should not be under consideration for publication elsewhere. We also encourage authors to send a short abstract or tentative title to the Editorial Office in advance (geriatrics@mdpi.com).

For further details on the submission process, please see the instructions for authors at the journal website.

Thanking you in anticipation.

With best wishes

Prof. James S. Powers MD
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the Special Issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Geriatrics is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.