Achieving Age-Friendly Health Care in an Outpatient Perioperative Clinic

According to a recent World Health Organization (WHO) publication, in 2020 the number of people aged 60 years and older outnumbered children younger than 5 years worldwide (asamonitor.pub/3NC2L83). Simultaneous to the rapidly growing older population, their surgical and perioperative needs are also increasing. Minimally invasive surgical techniques and procedures are allowing patients with increasingly complex comorbidities to proceed with intervention, when once this may not have been offered to them given the intrinsic risk. There is an expanding effort to provide comprehensive perioperative care to the older surgical patient. Housing the assessment, risk-stratification, and education of these patients and their caregivers in an outpatient clinic setting is an effective means of meeting this demand and to allowing a standardized process for evaluation. It is also in line with the national efforts of the Geriatric Surgery Verification Program. There are, however, multiple logistical obstacles to achieving effective, streamlined, age-friendly...