FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Is Your Hospital Age-Friendly? Non-profit Launches Hospital Ratings & Reviews Engine for Older Adults and Family Caregivers on AgeFriendly.com
- The website AgeFriendly.com is the home for all things age-friendly
- Website includes quality ratings for all U.S. hospitals, plus a showcase of facilities recognized as “age-friendly” by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI)
- Older adults and family members are encouraged to provide feedback about what matters when receiving healthcare
WALTHAM, Mass., Feb. 9, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — The Age-Friendly Institute today announced the launch of a hospital ratings and reviews engine on its website AgeFriendly.com. Features include a listing for each of the country’s 6,000 hospitals with Medicare five-star quality ratings and crowd-sourced reviews from a fast-growing community of older adults and family caregivers. Consumers are familiar with reviewing products and services before making purchase decisions, but this is the first such product specifically designed to capture the needs, wants and customer satisfaction levels of older adults.
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) works with hospitals to train and recognize them as age-friendly, using their best-practices rubric known as the 4Ms. On AgeFriendly.com, thousands of older adults and their caregivers are learning how, when, and where they should be able to expect quality that’s specific to them. Leslie Pelton, Vice President at IHI, welcomed the AgeFriendly.com Health section launch, saying, “Activating the older adult to ask for age-friendly care is a space that still requires more attention. We’re excited to see this additional exposure and tremendous growth catalyst for the system.”
Age-Friendly Institute Executive Director Jody Shue said “we’re pleased to help older consumers find the care that’s best for them. With increased demand from older adults, age-friendly healthcare will continue to grow and become ubiquitous.” The sentiment was echoed by The John A. Hartford Foundation President Terry Fulmer, who has advanced the concept of an age-friendly ecosystem. “Older adults now have a powerful tool to compare and comment on whether hospitals are focused on what matters most as we age,” said Dr. Fulmer. “We now have a feedback loop to fuel further improvements that can lead to safer, more evidence-based, age-friendly hospital care across the country.”
AgeFriendly.com’s deployment of this platform to capture customer satisfaction from older adults will advance awareness of age-friendly care and heighten its prioritization among administrators. Ardeshir Hashmi, MD, FACP, Chair for Geriatric Innovation at Cleveland Clinic said “we’re very committed to age-friendly care and are delighted to see this additional focus on the older adult constituency. This new initiative, and the fact it scales to be seen by so many people, can only help us get better, and I see this as an outstanding opportunity for us to continually optimize service to all older adults and caregivers”.
Hospital ratings and reviews capability now join the site’s 50,000+ member-reported ratings and reviews of cities and communities across the United States.
About The Age-Friendly Institute
Founded in 2019, the Age-Friendly Institute (institute.agefriendly.com) aggregates and elevates all things age-friendly. It harnesses the voices of older adults through its website created for and with older adults: AgeFriendly.com. This platform addresses the confusing landscape for families and individuals on how and where to find vetted programs and solutions for older adults. It combines expert-developed systems for establishing what is age-friendly with reviews, ratings and comments from individuals. Through its research and events, the Institute encourages cross-sector collaboration among aging services organizations. The Age-Friendly Institute also operates the Certified Age Friendly Employer (CAFE) program.
Media Contact For Age-Friendly Institute:
Emily Johnson