MSU-15-017 This project developed an open-access website that provides guidance to hospitals, ministries, planning agencies, administrators about Quality MSU-15-017 Improvement to make hospitals and EDs more appropriate to the care of older people. It is a valuable resource in planning for the coming increase in the number of older people accessing care in hospitals and EDs. It provides a forum to develop a community of practice to share ideas and tools among users. The website has been widely accessed across Canada in its first 18 months, and is used as a basis for the Senior-friendly ED Course. It is also a resource for EDs seeking Geriatric Emergency Department accreditation through the American College of Emergency Physicans Accreditation Programme.

MSU-15-017 Emergency Departments (ED) across Canada and around the world are just now starting to address the reality that older people, who have always been among the most complex and resource-intensive patients, are becoming for the first time nearly the majority of patients seen. ED care of older people is a specialized skill. Creating systems of care to optimize outcomes is a specialized field that involves changes in the physical environment, staffing roles and responsibilities, clinician education, policies and procedures of care, and QI initiatives. Finding resources to guide these changes can be challenging since little focussed work has been done in this field until recently. Innovation: It is surprising to think of addressing the specialized care needs of older ED patients as an “innovation.” However, in most hospitals, EDs are not set up to optimize their care. This project gathered together, for the first time, guideline-informed ideas, resources, strategies, tools, and building suggestions that managers and planners need in order to make senior-friendly changes. The contents are structured around the Geriatric ED Guidelines https://www.acep.org/geriedguidelines/ These resources are available on a free, open-access, secure website https://geriatric-ED.com that allows users to either access those resources as needed to inform changes at their site; or to become active contributing members of the community by sharing and disseminating their own innovations. The website content includes practices and models of care in place at the host hospital, Mount Sinai; and parallels a CHFI-funded spread initiative, the Acute Care of the Elderly Collaborative, which included 18 hospitals across Canada. This IF project makes those resources widely available nationally and internationally.