The Age Friendly Health Systems Initiative: Building Community-Clinical Collaboration to Improve Care and Outcomes for Older Adults and Their Families

To address the many gaps in quality care that older adults and their families are confronted with in today’s health care environment, and to ensure improvements in care experience, health outcomes and costs of care, The John A. Hartford Foundation and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) are partnering on the Age-Friendly Health Systems (AFHS) initiative. An Age-Friendly Health System is one that ensures older adults get the best care possible across the continuum, reduces healthcare-related harms, ensures patient satisfaction and delivers true value. With a goal to rapidly spread the AFHS model to 20 percent of U.S. hospitals and health systems by 2020, project stakeholders recognize that a key to optimizing the value of care under the model will be a more robust integration of healthcare delivery with the necessary community-based services that impact the social determinants of health (SDOH) for older adults.

On this webinar, from March 20, 2018, leaders of Age-Friendly Health Systems effort and the Aging and Disability Institute from The John A. Hartford Foundation and n4a discuss the synergies of these movements, opportunities for collaboration and strategies for how to move age-friendly health system progress forward through innovative partnerships.