The John A. Hartford Foundation Awards a Grant to The Council of Medical Specialty Societies to Support Expanding Age-Friendly Approaches to Specialty Ambulatory Care
Washington, DC –
In partnership with The John A. Hartford Foundation, the Council of Medical Specialty Societies (CMSS) will leverage its unique ability to partner with multiple specialty societies and associated practice sites to advance age-friendly care in specialty and subspecialty medicine. The funding will support CMSS efforts to spread resources and promote adoption of the Age-Friendly Health Systems 4Ms Framework—What Matters, Medication, Mentation, and Mobility—across society members, as well as through collaboration with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI).
This program will build on existing Age-Friendly Health Systems resources to advance adoption and reliable practice of the 4Ms Framework. Outcomes will include 4Ms implementation guidance for at least five specialties; 35-50 specialty practices recognized by IHI as Age-Friendly Health Systems participants; and 4Ms specialty-specific guidance integrated into CMSS and Age-Friendly Health Systems training, education, and other implementation and dissemination mechanisms.
“As our population ages, it is more important than ever to ensure that older adults receive high-quality, person-centered care wherever they seek health care services,” said Rani E. Snyder, MPA, acting president at The John A. Hartford Foundation. “This initiative advances Age-Friendly Health Systems beyond hospitals and primary care into the specialty settings where older adults and their family caregivers are increasingly turning for care. We’re proud to support the Council of Medical Specialty Societies in expanding the 4Ms Framework across specialties to ensure care is guided by what matters most, promotes safety and independence, and supports overall well-being.”
In addition to the selection and provision of awards to selected societies, CMSS will serve as a coordinating center to monitor and promote cross-specialty learning, improvement, and collaboration on the use of 4Ms. CMSS will establish and support a learning community for the awardees to share learnings and best practices and resources, and broadly disseminate these resources to the individual members of the selected societies, as well as broader spread across the entire CMSS membership.
“As older adults increasingly seek care in outpatient settings, we need to ensure that every physician, regardless of specialty, incorporates evidence-based, age-friendly approaches into routine practice,” said Helen Burstin, MD, MPH, MACP, CEO of the Council of Medical Specialty Societies. “At CMSS, we are committed to advancing age-friendly care across specialties through collaboration with our member societies and the support of The John A. Hartford Foundation.”
CMSS will establish and support a learning community for awardees to share what they are learning with each other. CMSS will share best practices and resources that emerge from the grant program to the broader community of specialists on the CMSS Learning Center, through the CMSS Annual Meeting, and through derivative resources summarizing project learnings and innovations.
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Funding Acknowledgement:
The Expanding Age-Friendly Approaches to Specialty Ambulatory Care project is supported by The John A. Hartford Foundation through a grant of $1,500,000 to the Council of Medical Specialty Societies. The John A. Hartford Foundation, based in New York City, is a private, nonpartisan, national philanthropy dedicated to improving the care of older adults. The leader in the field of aging and health, the Foundation has three areas of emphasis: creating age-friendly health systems, supporting family caregivers, and improving serious illness and end-of-life care.
About CMSS:
The Council of Medical Specialty Societies (CMSS) is a coalition of more than 50 specialty societies representing more than 800,000 physicians across the house of medicine. CMSS advances the expertise and collective voice of specialty societies and the patients they serve to drive meaningful change in the future of healthcare. www.cmss.org
