Care for elderly patients in emergency departments in France: current proposals for improvement

Emergency room admissions among older adults > 75y are increasing in France. Those stays can be harmful to patients, but also to the healthcare system itself, in an ageing society. Obviously, simply looking at the avoidance of these stays, does not address the entirety of this issue. Developing a true geriatric culture in emergency rooms seems to be another second option to pursue. In this context, geriatricians and emergency physicians have designed « Guidelines for older adults admission in French Emergency Departments ». This article presents three recommendations from the work of the French Society of Emergency Medicine (SFMU) for the development of a guide for emergency departments in France, led by 80 experts: develop the geriatric skills of emergency teams to promote quality decision-making and care and limit iatrogenic risk; promoting access to geriatric expertise or designing dedicated pathways for specific sub-populations (such as patients with neurocognitive disorders); and finally, designing high-quality alternatives to emergency department visits, in particular through geriatric hotlines.