The latest issue of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Charting Nursing’s Future discusses nurses’ role in addressing the “Silver Tsunami” of plus-65-year-old patients in the next few decades.
The piece looks at successful nurse-led initiatives in various parts of the country, such as a transitional-care model that uses advanced practice registered nurses to coordinate care for high-risk older adults across healthcare venues and the Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly. That program helps patients stay at home and out of the hospital by bringing them to PACE centers two or three days a week, to see primary-care providers, get physical therapy, refill prescriptions and engage in social activities.
It cites nine Centers on Aging in Arkansas — each owned and managed by a local hospital and each employing a geriatrician, an APRN and a social worker — to provide primary care and chronic-condition education.
