PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - J. H. Barber
AU  - J. B. Wallis
TI  - The benefits to an elderly population of continuing geriatric assessment
DP  - 1978 Jul 01
TA  - The Journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners
PG  - 428--433
VI  - 28
IP  - 192
4099  - http://bjgp.org/content/28/192/428.short
4100  - http://bjgp.org/content/28/192/428.full
SO  - J R Coll Gen Pract1978 Jul 01; 28
AB  - There is currently great interest in the care of the elderly in general practice and discussion about the role of surveillance programmes. We report a comparison between two surveys of an elderly population carried out with a view to determining the difference in findings between two surveys of the same population. Each patient had an average of 4·8 problems at the time of the second assessment. The number of active and unknown problems fell from 6·4 per patient at the initial assessment. The greatest improvements were found in such topics as clothing, bedding, heating, dentition, diet, vision, and hearing, and the least in such aspects as dependency, home hazards, and problems with a caring relative. We remain convinced that a continuing programme of geriatric assessment is valuable in general practice.