TUESDAY, April 23 (HealthDay News) -- For elderly patients, admission to the Mobile Acute Care of the Elderly (MACE) service, a novel model of care delivered by an interdisciplinary team, correlates with lower rates of adverse events and shorter hospital stays, compared with usual care, according to a study published online April 22 in JAMA Internal Medicine.
William W. Hung, M.D., M.P.H., from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, and colleagues examined the impact of the MACE service compared with usual care for 173 matched pairs of patients (mean age, 85.2 and 84.7 years, respectively) admitted with an acute illness.
The researchers found that patients admitted to the MACE service were significantly less likely to experience adverse events (9.5 versus 17.0 percent; adjusted odds ratio, 0.11) and had significantly shorter hospital stays compared with patients receiving usual care, after adjustment for confounding variables. The odds of readmission within 30 days were not significantly different between the groups (odds ratio, 0.91; P = 0.83). There was no difference in functional status between the two groups. In the MACE group, Care Transition Measure scores were 7.4 points higher.
"In conclusion, the MACE service is a readily adaptable model of inpatient care that may be associated with better outcomes for hospitalized older adults," the authors write. "As hospital systems devise ways to improve the delivery and quality of care for older adults, the MACE service model should be considered."
One author disclosed financial ties to the medical device industry.
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