Geriatric Medicine
Geriatric Medicine at SilverOak Health provides specialist assessment and management of older adults with complex, multimorbid health conditions, functional impairment, and vulnerability to adverse outcomes from acute illness and hospitalisation. Our consultant geriatricians take a comprehensive, patient-centred approach that prioritises maintaining independence, preventing decline, and aligning care with the values and priorities of each individual patient and their family.
Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA) — a multidimensional evaluation of medical, functional, cognitive, psychological, nutritional, social, and environmental needs — is the cornerstone of our practice and has been demonstrated to reduce mortality, functional decline, and nursing home admission in hospitalised older adults. CGA is delivered by our multidisciplinary team including geriatricians, specialist nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists, dietitians, social workers, and pharmacists.
Clinical priorities include delirium prevention and management, falls assessment and prevention, frailty evaluation and intervention, dementia diagnosis and care planning, polypharmacy review and deprescribing, osteoporosis management, pressure ulcer prevention, continence management, and advance care planning. Our acute frailty unit provides proactive CGA-based care from the point of emergency admission, preventing the functional deterioration that too commonly follows hospitalisation in frail older people. Outpatient services include a falls and syncope clinic, a memory and cognitive assessment service, and a day hospital providing rehabilitation and medical review for community-dwelling patients.
