Developing a tool to assess and monitor institutional readiness to address elder mistreatment in hospital emergency departments

ABSTRACT

Hospital emergency departments (EDs) lack the tools and processes required to facilitate consistent screening and intervention in cases of elder abuse and neglect. To address this need, the National Collaboratory to Address Elder Mistreatment has developed a clinical care model that ED’s can implement to improve screening, referral, and linkage to coordinated care and support services for older adults who are at risk of mistreatment. To gauge ED readiness to change and facilitate adoption of the care model, we developed an organizational assessment tool, the Elder Mistreatment Emergency Department Assessment Profile (EM-EDAP). Development included a phased approach in which we reviewed evidence on best practice; consulted with multidisciplinary experts; and sought input from ED staff. Based on this formative research, we developed a tool that can be used to guide EDs in focusing on practice improvements for addressing elder mistreatment that are most responsive to local needs and opportunities.

KEYWORDS:

• Elder abuse
• elder neglect
• elder mistreatment
• organizational assessment
• emergency department
• implementation science
• screening
• referral
• coordinated care

Disclosure statement

The authors confirm that there are no relevant financial or non-financial competing interests to report.

Additional information

Funding

This project was supported by grants from The John A. Hartford Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and the Health Foundation for Western and Central New York.