| Treating elderly patients may sound like it would entail providing the same routine services, but physicians who work with seniors must usually take a different approach. Not only do patients after age 60 have a different set of medical issues compared to the younger population, they’re also more needy, vulnerable, and have a different comfort level as well as different kinds of situations that may impact their health care.
“Their problems are different. They have chronic problems, are worried about long-term care. You have to find out a lot of things about them,” says Dr. Wajahat Khan, MD, a physician at the Gig Harbor Medical Clinic operated by the Franciscan Medical Group. “Giving them the answers can be challenging.”
As patients get older, their concerns have a different focus, as they look at issues like quality of life and end of life, says Dr. Sundance Rogers, MD, physician at Virginia Mason’s Winslow Clinic. “It’s a lot more chronic care management,” she says.
Physicians who specialize in geriatric care are better positioned to understand all the new issues faced by elders. In addition, many family practice doctors and internists focus their practices on the senior population. Khan, for example, provides family care but has a large client base of seniors. A Gig Harbor resident who started in health care in Pakistan, Khan says it may take a certain comfort level to work with geriatric patients.
“I’m very comfortable seeing older patients. I try to build a relationship with them, and it takes time to have a successful one,” he says.
Rogers, a 15-year veteran with Virginia Mason, has focused her practice on geriatric patients for the past five years. A doctor who made her career choice in eighth grade, she feels elderly people are often forgotten by our society while they have so much to give.
“I really enjoy getting to know the patients and their families,” she says. “They’re so wise and have so much to teach you.”
To provide the best care, she says she uses a team approach with her nurse: The nurse can answer a lot of questions, focus on education and discuss various issues. “Then, we both see the patient together and figure out how to solve the problem together,” she says.
Khan says one of the challenges for physicians who work with older people is availability due to the need to form a long-term relationship. “With geriatric patients, you need to stay in a place (of practice) for a long time, and be available to patients all the time,” he says.
Even a bigger challenge is the growing number of elderly patients vs. the limited number of practices that accept Medicare. “Part of what we’re doing with the team approach is trying to serve the growing Medicare population, because we’re finding a lot of smaller practices don’t take those patients,” Rogers says. “As a big corporation, we’re able to say yes, but as Baby Booomers age, there will not be enough physicians (to serve them). It’s definitely a challenge — we get patients every day who can’t be seen anywhere else.”
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