Perception of primary care physicians on the impact of comprehensive geriatric assessment: what is the next step?

Older adults are at high risk of developing multimorbidity, and the high levels of clinical and psychosocial complexity in this population pose special challenges for primary care physicians (PCPs). As a way to improve the care for the older adults, a number of health systems have developed programs to provide comprehensive geriatric assessment (CGA), which generally refers to an intensive interprofessional evaluation and management of geriatric syndromes with the goals of maximizing health in aging. Sternberg and Bentur examined the impact of CGA as perceived by PCPs, the PCPs attitude toward CGA, and their satisfaction with CGA. In this commentary, we seek to provide additional context to the current state of outpatient consultative CGA and how it relates to the findings in the study by Sternberg and Bentur. The knowledge gained from this study begs for future investigations, especially in the areas of PCPs’ understanding of outpatient consultative CGA, the perceived benefit in health outcomes and actual health outcomes, perceived needs in geriatric consultation, preference in management of complex geriatric syndromes, and interests in continuing education in geriatrics. Insight into these factors could allow for improvement of the current outpatient consultative CGA model and allow for adaption of the model to local needs.