Winter 2001

The University of Colorado Denver

Volume 4, Number 2

We are pleased to announce that Stacy Fischer, M.D., Fellow in the Division of Geriatric Medicine, has received a Hartford/Jahnigen Center of Excellence Fellowship Stipend and Grant Award for her project entitled The Effects of Palliative Care Education on Housestaff's Knowledge, Attitudes, and Care of Patients. This award is provided in conjunction with an Academic Geriatrics Fellowship from the John A. Hartford Foundation and the American Federation for Aging Research.

With these awards, Dr. Fischer plans to earn her doctorate in Health and Behavioral Sciences and to examine whether a palliative care educational intervention will reduce residents' anxiety and increase residents' knowledge about end-of-life care. Through this intervention, she hopes to improve patient outcomes, as measured by medical record documentation of palliative care management.

Dr. Stacy Fischer has received
a Hartford/Jahnigen
Center on Excellence
Fellowship Stipend and
Grant Award.

On January 24, 2002 from 7:30 a.m. until 1:30 p.m., the Hartford/Jahnigen Center of Excellence will be sponsoring its second annual Geriatrics Research Forum in the VA Auditorium near the UCD campus. The 2002 Research Forum will provide an opportunity for students, faculty, and members of the community to present and discuss their research in the field of geriatrics.

This year's guest speakers will be Richard Besdine, M.D., F.A.C.P., Director of the Center for Gerontology and Health Care Research at Brown University, and Terrie

Wetle, Ph.D., Associate Dean, Public Health and Public Policy, also at Brown University. Dr. Besdine, former Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) Chief Medical Officer and Director of HCFA's Health Standards and Quality Bureau, will speak on policy options for improving the Medicare program. Dr. Wetle, former Deputy Director of the National Institute on Aging, will speak on future priorities in aging research.

The 2002 Hartford/Jahnigen
Center of Excellence
Research Forum will be held
on January 24, 2002.

To register for the 2002 Geriatrics Research Forum, or to receive further information regarding submitting an abstract, please contact Danielle Holthaus at Danielle.Holthaus@uchsc.edu or 303-315-1023. The deadline for registration and abstract submission is December 31, 2001.

Corinne Rieder, Ed.D., Executive Director of the John A. Hartford Foundation, will visit UCD to conduct the annual site visit evaluation of the Hartford/Jahnigen Center of Excellence on December 12, 2001.

Two new fellows, Cari Levy, M.D., and Shad Grubbs, M.D., began the geriatrics fellowship program in July 2001.

Dr. Levy graduated from medical school at the University of Colorado and completed her internal medicine residency (including one year as Chief Medical Resident) at Vanderbilt University. Under the fellowship program, Dr. Levy is working with Dr. Andrew Kramer to study the determinants of site of death among nursing home residents.

The Center on Aging (COA) Research Section at UCD was established in 1995 by Dr. Andrew Kramer to conduct geriatrics health services research and to teach health services research methods related to aging. The COA Research Section is now comprised of 20 faculty members with diverse backgrounds in areas including medicine, public health, nursing, social sciences, and research methodology. Research projects currently being conducted relate to nursing home quality of care, transitions across sites of geriatric care, and Medicare post-acute care quality. Several of these projects are summarized below.

Current projects are related to
nursing home quality of care,
geriatric care transitions,
and Medicare post-acute
care quality.

Nursing Home Quality of Care
Three research projects currently underway at the COA Research Section examine nursing home quality. A five-year project is aimed at re-designing the current nursing home quality of care review process to include a more standardized, systematic approach utilizing quality indicators. The goal is implementation of a revised national nursing home quality assurance process in fiscal year 2003.

A second study related to nursing home quality will implement a protocol for treating nursing home acquired pneumonia based on national guidelines, and will evaluate the effect of adherence to that protocol on patient outcomes. Outcomes to be examined include: hospitalization, functional decline, community discharge, recurrent pneumonia, and death.

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