San Diego County is the first in the nation to earn a geriatric emergency department accreditation in every eligible hospital, health local and state leaders announced on Thursday.
Older adults now have access to specialized emergency care from any of the 18 facilities fully accredited by the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) throughout San Diego County. Representatives from each of the hospitals and health systems, local and state governments, and the Hospital Association of San Diego and Imperial Counties broke the news during a press briefing at UC San Diego Health.
“This is a milestone day for San Diego County health care and its future serving our largest growing constituency, seniors,” said Nick Macchione, Director of the County’s Health and Human Services Agency. “It seems like yesterday, but it was three years ago, during the presentation of the inaugural Aging Roadmap to our Board of Supervisors, that the County prioritized its support of our hospital partners to develop a network of emergency departments for this population. I want to thank those hospital partners and West Health for this collective achievement to help our seniors Live Well.”
Officials credited this county-wide accreditation to the San Diego Senior Emergency Care initiative, a partnership spearheaded by the County of San Diego and West Health, a San Diego-based nonprofit focused on improving aging. This initiative began just a few months before the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The goal was to ensure that no matter which part of San Diego an older adult was living in, they would have access to high-quality senior-friendly care before, during, and after a medical crisis,” said Shelley Lyford, CEO and Chair, West Health and a commissioner on the California Commission on Aging. “The COVID-19 pandemic, which disproportionately affected seniors, only made all our work that much more important and the accomplishment that much more urgent and consequential.”
ACEP established its Geriatric Emergency Department Accreditation Program in 2018 in response to growing evidence that emergency departments are less able to meet the health care needs of older persons who often have multiple chronic conditions and social support needs. The program offers three tiers of accreditation based on multiple factors including geriatric-focused policies and protocols, clinical and patient outcomes and staff, senior-friendly physical environment enhancements, and quality improvement initiatives
This county-wide GED accreditation has the potential to impact the lives of over 275,000 seniors in the region. The rise of senior-friendly emergency departments comes as the population of older Americans continues to grow in the nation.
County officials said that people over the age of 65 will make up an estimated 21 percent of the population by 2030, up from 13 percent today.
Alvarado Hospital Medical Center, Kaiser Permanente San Diego, Palomar Health, Paradise Valley Hospital, Scripps Health, Sharp HealthCare, Tri-City Medical Center, UC San Diego Health, and VA San Diego Healthcare System are GED accredited in the San Diego Region.
