Celebrating Two Years of Impact — Vituity and West Health Transform Emergency Care for Older Adults
November 12, 2025
Two years ago, Vituity and West Health Institute joined forces around a shared vision: to transform emergency care for older adults nationwide. As the number of older patients visiting emergency departments (EDs) will climb 28% over the next decade, our partnership aims to ensure that every older adult receives high quality, age-friendly healthcare.
Vituity recognized that many of our EDs needed stronger systems, tools, and training to meet this growing demand. With West Health’s national leadership in geriatric innovation and Vituity’s clinicians serving more than 10 million patients each year, the collaboration merged two complementary partners. The result: a fast-moving initiative that is elevating care standards across emergency departments nationwide.
Why It Matters Now
The U.S. population is aging at an unprecedented rate. In many emergency departments, patients aged 65 and older already make up more than a quarter of all visits. Geriatric emergency care is no longer a niche subset of medicine. It’s the new normal.
Recognizing this shift, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently introduced the “Age-Friendly” hospital measure, highlighting that age-tailored care is integral to quality performance, not ancillary to it.
For hospitals navigating challenges like boarding, readmissions, and inpatient length of stay, improving geriatric emergency care is a powerful strategy. Multiple studies show that tailored geriatric protocols can reduce unnecessary admissions, prevent complications, and improve transitions of care.
Partnership in Action
To help hospitals achieve these outcomes, Vituity and West Health launched the Geriatric ED Accreditation (GEDA) Collaborative, a structured series of four-month sessions rooted in education, quality improvement, and mentorship. Led by Dr. Sukhvir Singh and Tien Pham, these guided cohorts have supported dozens of teams through the GEDA application and implementation process, ensuring lasting clinical and operational improvements.
To accelerate and sustain improvement, Vituity developed a Geriatric Care Dashboard to track key metrics such as admission rates for patients ≥65, revisit rates, geriatric ED volumes, and clinical classifications like falls, syncope, and infections.
As a result of the performance improvement effort:
In 2024, 22 Vituity-staffed EDs engaged in the collaborative.
In 2025, 20 more EDs joined, reflecting sustained momentum.
Currently, 28 Vituity EDs across six states are officially GEDA-accredited.
By the end of 2025, that number is projected to grow to 50 accredited EDs in 11 states.
Each of these sites represents local champions — physicians, nurses, and administrators — who are redesigning workflows and reshaping ED culture around the needs of older adults.
Looking Ahead
Investing in geriatrics advances our health systems’ missions. As we look to the next phase of this partnership, our goal remains clear: to hardwire a national standard of geriatric emergency care that delivers safety, dignity, and quality to every older adult who walks through our doors.
Together, West Health and Vituity are proving that when evidence-based processes meet committed teams, we can reimagine how we care for older patients. Thank you to the leadership of Dr. Sukhvir Singh, Tien Pham, and dozens of ED physician and nursing leaders – your hard work is making a difference.