As Americans continue to age it has become increasingly recognized their health should be evaluated via frailty (a measure of increased vulnerability resulting from decline in reserve and function across multiple organ systems). Time and time again frailty status has been shown to predict clinical outcomes particularly hospitalization course, disposition status, complication rate, and overall morbidity.
While there is not a consensus on which frailty tool best serves a given patient population and the gold standard Fried Index (Fried LP et al. 2001) may be difficult to conduct in some settings, there exists a gap in the utilization of outpatient frailty assessment and the understanding that this prospective assessment can be beneficial to the patient, provider, and hospital (supporting the triple aim).
In fact, multiple research studies support frailty assessment as potentially 1) both rapid and low cost, 2) allowing for patient stratification, and 3) correlated intervention leading to improved health outcomes for the patient and an improved course for the healthcare delivery team as well as an overall economic savings. Frailty assessment has been supported by multiple professional bodies (e.g., the British Geriatrics Society (Turner and Clegg 2014) and Asia-Pacific Clinical Practice Guidelines (Dent et al. 2017)); however, it remains largely a topic of discussion to the geriatric practitioner.