Providing Age-Friendly Care

At Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital, we provide high-quality, specialized care for older adults. Memorial Hermann Southwest has received The Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s (IHI) Age-Friendly Health Systems Committed to Care Excellence recognition. The hospital is also recognized as a Nurses Improving Care of Healthsystem Elders (NICHE) member facility, one of only 10 in Texas and the first facility of any Houston-based health system.

Aligning Our Care with Your Priorities

We want to provide you with the best care possible during your stay. In doing so, we want to ensure we are focusing our efforts on what is most important to you and your loved ones.

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) has identified four key elements to providing superior care to adults 65 years of age and older. These include the appropriate use of medications, ensuring older adults maintain mobility, monitoring and managing mentation and aligning care with what matters most to the patient and/or his or her caregiver(s). Together these make up the 4Ms framework.

How are we addressing what matters most?

We are asking all patients and/or their caregivers, as appropriate, to tell us what matters most to them.

What do we do with this information?

This important information will be included in the conversation between you, your physician and physician's team each time they visit you.

What Matters

Know and align care with each other adult's specific health outcome goals and care preferences including, but not limited to, end-of-life-care, and across settings of care.

Medication

If medication is necessary, use Age-Friendly medication that does not interfere with What Matters to the other adult, Mobility or Mentation across settings of care.

Mentation

Prevent, identify, treat and manage dementia, depression and delirium across settings of care.

Mobility

Ensure older adults move safely every day in order to maintain function and do What Matters.

We want to understand what matters to you when it comes to your health and your health care. The more we know, the better we can align your priorities with the care you receive during your hospital stay and after discharge.

Identify your goals or values

  • What are your priorities when it comes to your health?
  • What concerns you most when you think about your health?
  • What hopes/worries do you have about your health during and after your hospital stay?
  • What important activities are limited by your illness?

Identify ways/barriers to achieving goals

  • What aspects of your health care help you reach your goals/align with your priorities?
  • What aspects of your health care do not help you reach your goals/align with your priorities?

ACE Unit Medical Model

Patients on the ACE Unit are cared for by an interdisciplinary team with specialized training, experience and interest in caring for older adults. Team members include: geriatric specialty trained registered nurses and nursing assistants, nurse practitioners/advance care practitioners, social workers, case managers, physical therapists, occupational therapists, dietitians, pharmacists and hospitalists.