New horizons: urgent care for older people with frailty

Urgent care for older people is a major public health issue and attracts much policy attention. Despite many efforts to curb demand, many older people with frailty and urgent care needs to access acute hospital services. The predominant model of care delivered in acute hospitals tends to be medically focussed, yet the evidence-based approaches that appear to be effective invoke a holistic model of care, delivered by interdisciplinary teams embedding geriatric competencies into their service. This article reviews the role for holistic care-termed Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment in the research literature-and how it can be used as an organising framework to guide future iterations of acute services to be better able to meet the multifaceted needs of older people.