Unleashing frailty from laboratory into real world: A critical step toward frailty-guided clinical care of older adults

Abstract

Understanding patients' degree of frailty is crucial for tailoring clinical care for older adults based on their physiologic reserve and health needs (“frailty-guided clinical care”). Two prerequisites for frailty-guided clinical care are: (1) access to frailty information at the point of care and (2) evidence to inform decisions based on frailty information. Recent advancements include web-based frailty assessment tools and their electronic health records integration for time-efficient, standardized assessments in clinical practice. Additionally, database frailty scores from administrative claims and electronic health records data enable scalable assessments and evaluation of the effectiveness and safety of medical interventions across different frailty levels using real-world data. Given limited evidence from clinical trials, real-world database studies can complement trial results and help treatment decisions for individuals with frailty. This article, based on the Thomas and Catherine Yoshikawa Award lecture I gave at the American Geriatrics Society Annual Meeting in Long Beach, California, on May 5, 2023, outlines our group's contributions: (1) developing and integrating a frailty index calculator (Senior Health Calculator) into the electronic health records at an academic medical center; (2) developing a claims-based frailty index for Medicare claims; (3) applying this index to evaluate the effect of medical interventions for patients with and without frailty; and (4) efforts to disseminate frailty assessment tools through the launch of the eFrailty website and the forthcoming addition of the claims-based frailty index to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Chronic Conditions Data Warehouse. This article concludes with future directions for frailty-guided clinical care.