Starting in 2025, hospitals will be expected to meet new federal standards for age-friendly care through the Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting (IQR) Program. These measures focus on improving care for adults 65 and older by aligning treatment with individual goals, ensuring safer use of medications, and screening for frailty, cognitive changes, and social vulnerability.
The Guiding an Improved Dementia Experience (GUIDE) Model, a CMS-supported initiative, is designed to enhance care for people living with dementia and their caregivers through coordinated, community-based partnerships. Magnolia—one of just four designated GUIDE participants in Washington State—offers wraparound support that aligns closely with the goals of the new hospital measures.
Here’s how Magnolia can help hospitals and health systems meet these benchmarks:
1. Clarifying “What Matters Most”
At Magnolia, care begins with listening. We take the time to understand each individual’s values and long-term goals. By sharing this information with hospital teams, we help ensure that care delivered during hospitalization reflects what matters most to patients and their families.
2. Improving Medication Safety
Our interdisciplinary team actively monitors medications to identify those that may be unnecessary or harmful for older adults. When a Magnolia participant is hospitalized, we can provide up-to-date medication lists and real-world insight into how medications affect them at home—reducing risk and supporting safer transitions.
3. Supporting Frailty and Cognitive Screening
Magnolia staff regularly assess for changes in cognition, mobility, nutrition, and fall risk. These insights can strengthen in-hospital assessments and allow for more targeted discharge planning, especially for individuals living with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, or other neurodegenerative conditions.
4. Addressing Social Vulnerability
We work with families every day who are navigating not just medical needs, but housing instability, caregiving fatigue, language barriers, and transportation challenges. Hospitals can lean on GUIDE partners like Magnolia to identify and respond to these social determinants of health, which are often invisible in clinical settings.
5. Collaborating on Age-Friendly Leadership
As hospitals designate teams to lead their age-friendly initiatives, GUIDE programs can serve as collaborative partners. Magnolia’s experience coordinating care across medical, behavioral, and community systems brings valuable insight into how to design effective, patient-centered systems.
Magnolia is here to bridge the gap between hospital care and everyday life.
Whether we’re supporting medication reviews, offering in-home visits, or guiding families through a new diagnosis, our role is to ensure that people living with dementia—and those who care for them—never have to navigate the healthcare system alone.
