Aurora Health Care Among Six Sites Chosen for National Medicare Collaborative on Geriatric Care

Aurora Health Care Among Six Sites Chosen for National Medicare Collaborative
on Geriatric Care

MILWAUKEE, Oct. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Aurora Health Care is one of only six health
care sites in the U.S. invited by the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Johns
Hopkins University to participate in the Medicare Innovations Collaborative,
an effort to shape health care for senior citizens nationwide by applying best
practices in geriatrics.

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"We selected Aurora Health Care because of its track record in developing
successful programs for seniors and our belief in its commitment to expanding
those programs to meet the challenge of the changing health care needs of its
community," said Albert Siu, M.D., principal investigator of the collaborative
study. Siu is professor and chairman of Geriatrics and Adult Development at
the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City.

"It's an honor to be included in this group of medical schools and health
systems that are recognized for best practices in geriatric medicine," said
Michael Malone, M.D., medical director of Senior Services for Aurora Health
Care. "We've been working the last 30 years to develop specialized care for
seniors, and we look forward to sharing what we've learned."

Through the Medicare Innovations Collaborative, Aurora Health Care will
provide technical expertise to other health care providers that want to
develop an Acute Care for Elders program. Known as ACE, the program is in
place on 28 medical-surgical units at Aurora's acute care hospitals.

In turn, Aurora hopes to tap into other providers' expertise in palliative
care and to add a program known as the Hospital Elder Life Program, or HELP,
designed for patients who are at risk for developing delirium.

"The goal is for the collaborative to provide other health systems, medical
schools and hospitals with a portfolio of programs that could be the standard
of care for older patients," said Marsha Vollbrecht, Aurora's director of
Senior Services.

Aurora's ACE program is designed to help older adults maintain their mobility
during a hospital stay, enable them to live independently at home after
discharge, and minimize the amount of rehabilitation needed before they return
home.

The Acute Care for the Elderly concept was developed in Cleveland and Akron,
Ohio. The ACE program was put in place at Aurora Sinai Medical Center in
Milwaukee in September 2000, and later was expanded to 11 Aurora hospitals,
improving outcomes for older patients throughout eastern Wisconsin.

The Aurora Senior Services team developed two new pieces for the ACE program
that are of particular interest to other health systems. The first is called
ACE Tracker, a software integrated with electronic health records that helps
identify vulnerable hospitalized seniors. These may include patients who are
at risk of falls after they return home. Once the problem is identified, the
ACE team intervenes, creating a treatment plan to address the patient's
specific needs.

The second new component of ACE is "e-Geriatrician", which helps Aurora
geriatricians perform "virtual rounds" via telemedicine. Geriatricians assist
patients at Aurora's hospitals across eastern Wisconsin without the need for
travel. They confer with a hospital's full interdisciplinary team, which
includes a nurse facilitator, team nursing leader, case manager, nurse,
pharmacist, physical therapist, dietitian, social worker and chaplain. The
geriatrician then collaborates with the team to devise an appropriate, timely
treatment plan.

"The collaborative was attracted to Aurora not only because of our success in
developing this model of care, but also because of our ability to effectively
spread that model to all of our sites," Dr. Malone said. "Also distinctive was
our work to incorporate ACE into our electronic health record system."

"Through ACE Tracker and e-Geriatrician, Aurora is able to reach thousands of
seniors and improve their care," Dr. Malone said.

As health care providers struggle to deal with a shortage of geriatricians
throughout the country and improve access to care for an aging population, the
"e-Geriatrician" and ACE Tracker programs may provide part of the solution.
The American Geriatric Society's AGS Foundation for Health in Aging projects
that between 2010 and 2030, one in five Americans will be older than 65.
Meanwhile, the number of certified geriatricians in the United States has
declined from 8,800 to 7,100.

"That's what makes this project so vital," Dr. Malone said. "Finding better,
more efficient ways to care for the elderly is more important than ever."

In addition to Aurora, the other sites chosen to participate in the Medicare
Innovations Collaborative are: Carolinas Health Care Systems/Carolinas Medical
Center-Mercy, Charlotte, N.C.; Crouse Hospital, Syracuse, N.Y.; Geisinger
Health Systems, Danville, Pa.; Lehigh Valley Health Network, Allentown, Pa.;
and University Hospitals Case Medical Center, Cleveland, Ohio. The project is
being funded by the Atlantic Philanthropies.

About Michael Malone, M.D.
Michael Malone, medical director of Aurora Health Care's Senior Services, is
an editor of the medical textbook "The Practice of Geriatrics," Fourth
Edition. (Duthie E, Katz P, Malone ML, editors. Elsevier Publishing Company,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, June 2007.) He also is a professor of medicine
for the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, and
medical director of the Aurora Visiting Nurse Association of Wisconsin.

About Aurora Health Care
Aurora Health Care is a not-for-profit Wisconsin health care provider and a
national leader in efforts to improve the quality of health care. Aurora
offers care at sites in more than 90 communities throughout eastern Wisconsin.

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SOURCE Aurora Health Care

Sue Pierman of Aurora Health Care, +1-414-647-6432, sue.pierman@aurora.org,
Online newsroom, www.Aurora.org/Newsroom