Geriatric Consultation and Expertise for the Hospitalized Patient

With the "oldest old" patients becoming a larger portion of the population of hospitalized patients every year, hospitalists will have to develop a working system that incorporates geriatric medicine expertise into their daily work flow. In this article, the authors review whether geriatric expertise is needed, which patients benefit from geriatric expertise, what geriatric expertise consists of, and what system changes are needed to implement geriatric expertise. Geriatricians and hospitalists will need to collaborate to implement care pathways that anticipate the needs of frail older patients using successfully tested models as guides.