Geriatrics-for-Specialists Initiative: An Eleven-Specialty Collaboration to Improve Care of Older Adults

In the early 1990s, visionary leaders at the American Geriatrics Society and The John A. Hartford Foundation recognized that the marked and growing shortage of geriatrics healthcare professionals would lead to a U.S. healthcare system ill prepared to provide optimal care for the ever-increasing number of older Americans. Led by the late Dennis W. Jahnigen, MD, they set forth a plan to address this shortage by collaborating with surgical and related medical specialists to create a series of programs to foster the highest quality care of older adults. Their unique programmatic vision was that every physician, not just geriatricians, would have basic knowledge and skills in geriatric care, because geriatricians cannot and should not meet the need alone.