Acute Care for Elders (ACE) Unit – Medicine (2024)

Leading Practices

← Back to Search Results

The Acute Care for Elders (ACE) Unit at Mount Sinai Hospital (MSH) was developed to improve care to older hospitalized patients. The ACE unit is a unique and specialized General Internal Medicine Unit (GIM) recognizing the needs of acutely ill older patients and modifying common medical practices and standards to best meet these needs.

The ACE Unit emphasizes two key goals:

1. Providing appropriate, knowledgeable and effective care for older patients who are experiencing an acute medical episode and subsequent changes in physical, cognitive or functional abilities.
2. Assisting older adults and their families and caregivers in maintaining or improving their functional, physical and social abilities, enabling them to continue to live independently and prevent or delay institutionalization.

The ACE Unit’s core components and philosophy is centred around promoting function and preventing, recognizing and minimizing common hospitalization hazards (ie. Delirium, Functional Decline etc) that often negatively impacts care and patient outcomes.

The ACE Unit transformed from an existing GIM Unit with environmental and resource modifications to provide a milieu better suited to meet the unique needs of older patients. These patients may have multiple chronic health conditions, complex social issues or a change in functional cognition.

The ACE Unit is an example of patient and family centred care at its highest level by applying an interprofessional team- based approach to early involvement in providing effective care. It draws upon the strengths of MSH’s innovative Emergency Department, Geriatric and Palliative Medicine, Psychiatry and Primary Care programs, in addition to working closely with community partners like the Community Care Access Centre and the House Calls primary care program to ensure safe transitions home.

What has made the ACE Unit a successful initiative is its continuous focus on integrating daily quality improvement practices; on developing unique educational programming to better understand and care for older adults; and its unique approaches to engaging patient, families and technologies that have already won the ACE Unit national recognition. Our patients are receiving high quality care that is resulting in less functional decline and a more durable discharge back to their home. They and their families value the care they are receiving, and our staff feel more empowered to provide the geriatric-centred care required. These initiatives are clearly helping us facilitate the delivery of better patient and system outcomes, and in garnering recognition for excellence in geriatric care both internally and externally.