Caring for the Elderly

Excerpt

To the editor: Dr. Weksler and colleagues (1) propose their Elderplan as a didactic novelty. Indeed it is! To educate future physicians in geriatrics, Elderplan would restrict their role from comprehensive case management of older people in order to pursue "biomedical expertise" and "technologically specialized" activities.

What the authors have seen at Cornell Medical Center of the "medical, social, and environmental factors that affect the lives of the frail elderly" and the crazed infrastructure of programs and services has appalled rather than challenged them. In requiring physicians to have skills outside the present repertoire, why, they might "dissuade and disappoint!"