Do health assets have a protective effect for hospitalized frail older adults?

Abstract

Background: Although increasing frailty is predictive of increased mortality and length of stay for hospitalized older adults, this approach ignores health assets that individuals can utilize to recover following hospital admission. Aim: To examine whether health assets mitigate the effect of frailty on outcomes for older adults admitted to hospital. Design: Patients of 1418 aged ≥ 70 years admitted to 11 hospitals in Australia were evaluated at admission using the interRAI assessment system for Acute Care, which surveys a large number of domains, including cognition, communication, mood and behaviour, activities of daily living, continence, nutrition, skin condition, falls and medical diagn..