CHI Memorial Earns ‘Geriatric Emergency Department’ Accreditation

CHI Memorial has earned the American College of Emergency Physicians’ (ACEP) Geriatric Emergency Department Level 3 Accreditation (GEDA).  The program is part of an effort to improve and standardize emergency care for older patients. CHI Memorial is the first hospital in the Chattanooga area to earn GEDA and is one of only five hospitals in Tennessee with the designation.

To achieve GEDA, the hospital must demonstrate that the participating emergency department (1) includes both a physician and nurse with specialized geriatric training on staff, (2) meets environmental criteria such as easy patient access to water and mobility aids and (3) has a geriatric quality improvement program.

The voluntary GEDA program, which includes three levels similar to trauma center designations, provides specific criteria and goals for emergency clinicians and administrators to target. The accreditation process provides more than two dozen best practices for geriatric care and the level of GEDA accreditation achieved depends upon how many of these best practices an emergency department is able to meet.  A Level 3 emergency department must incorporate many of these best practices, along with providing interdisciplinary geriatric education, and have geriatric appropriate equipment and supplies available.

CHI Memorial also recently received Geriatric Surgery Verification (GSV) from the American College of Surgeons, which has 32 surgical standards designed to improve surgical care and outcomes for older adults, and was named an Age-Friendly Health System, an initiative of The John A. Hartford Foundation and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, in partnership with the American Hospital Association and the Catholic Health Association of the United States.  Age-Friendly Health Systems provide a set of four evidence-based elements of high-quality care, known as the “4Ms,” to all older adults in the health system: What Matters, Medication, Mentation, and Mobility.

"The achievement of obtaining these accreditations is truly heartwarming to see as a geriatrician because it shows our organization's dedication to improved medical care for older adults at all levels of care,” shared Alycia Cleinman, geriatrician, CHI Memorial Center for Health Aging.