Abstract

Commentary With its highly selected population attendance, an ED is associated with a Quality care for older people high risk of admission for older people. This may be partly related to the nature with urgent and emergency of the service and the environment in which it is provided. The contributing factors may include lack of competence care needs in UK emergency in managing older people, poor availabil- ity of information, poor services outside departments the ED and a lack of integrated care, exa- cerbated by the lack of 7 day working 1 2 3 and out of hours support services. A Jay Banerjee, Simon Conroy, Matthew W Cooke recent systematic review of negative health outcomes in older people attend- ing EDs identified adverse events, includ- Over the next 20 years, the number of within the context of the National Health ing under triage of illness severity, lack of people aged 85 years and over in the UK Service in the UK, although the majority recognition of geriatric syndromes, sub- is set to increase by two-thirds, compared are universally applicable. The project was optimal drug therapy and adverse com- with a 10% growth in the overall popula- jointly led by