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Aim: That geriatric evaluation and management (GEM) is associated with better quality of care for elderly patients has been reported by previous studies, but evidence supporting that GEM can reduce the burden of morbidity (BOM) was lacking. The aim of this study was to evaluate the benefits of outpatient GEM on reducing BOM and medical utilization in Taiwan. Methods: Data of this retrospective case-control study were obtained from the 2004-2006 Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD). Patients who attended the outpatient GEM program for over 6 months in a tertiary medical center in 2005 were enrolled as the case group, and a 1:5 age and gender-matched control group was formed by randomly-selected patients from the same medical center for comparisons. BOM was obtained by applying the Adjusted Clinical Group (ACG) program, and medical utilization variables were totalled for each patient from the NHIRD. Patients were further reassigned to two morbidity categories, the low (resource utilization bands ≤ 3) and high (resource utilization bands > 3) morbidity category, according to their degree of morbidity before statistical analyses. Results: Data of 4254 elderly patients (709 cases, 3545 controls) were included in the study. BOM and medical utilization were increased in both groups in both morbidity categories during the study period. However, the growth of BOM, total medical expenditure, number of emergency department visit, and days and expenditure of hospitalization were significantly reduced in the case than the control group in the low morbidity category, not the high morbidity category. Conclusion: Outpatient GEM could effectively reduce growth of BOM and medical utilization for relatively healthy elderly patients in Taiwan where elderly patients haverelatively free access to general and specialty care. The results of this study implied the potential benefits of systematically implementing GEM in primary health-care settings to improve the quality of care and slow down the growth of BOM for elderly patients. Geriatr Gerontol Int 2012; ••: ••-••. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The prognosis of in-hospital cardiopulmonary arrest remains very poor. Reports have shown patients often have clinically abnormal events prior to arrest. To improve patient outcome and prevent arrest, detection of the abnormal events with early intervention has been advocated. However, the incidence of these events in Taiwan and their clinical significance remain unclear.Methods: We conducted a prospective observational study with the implementation of the clinical alert system (CAS) in a university-affiliated tertiary referral medical center. Clinically abnormal events were detected using the CAS criteria for acute physiologic deterioration, and reported to experienced physicians for management. Patient and report data were retrieved, collected and analyzed.Results: During the 14-month study period, a total of 2,050 events were detected in 1,640 patients. The estimated incidence of the events was 3.19 per 1,000 bed-days, which occurred in 2.14% of admissions. The most common event was abnormal heart rate (36.5%), followed by desaturation (26.7%), abnormal respiratory rate (24.5%), and abnormal blood pressure (23.1%). The majority of the events were reported in the day time, and nurses contributed most of the reports (66.4%). The 30-day and in-hospital mortality rates were 26.3% and 34%, respectively. Multivariate survival analysis showed that desaturation (relative risk [RR] = 1.715; p < 0.001), abnormal respiratory rate (RR = 1.652; p < 0.001), abnormal blood pressure (RR = 1.460; p = 0.001), coma (RR = 1.918; p < 0.001), and oliguria (RR = 1.424; p = 0.0024) were significantly associated with 30-day mortality. Mortality of patients in the last 2 months was significantly lower than that in the first 2 months (20.5% vs. 35.4%; p < 0.001), which suggests the effectiveness of the CAS.Conclusion: The development of clinically abnormal events is associated with poor outcome, which suggests that early detection and timely management of these events is necessary. Implementation of the CAS may improve the in-hospital outcome of these patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]