New Hampshire to open nation's first emergency department focused on rural senior citizens - Entrepreneur Generations

Lebanon, N.H. (Wikipedia map)

Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire is partnering with West Health, a group of area nonprofit organizations dedicated to improving health care access for seniors, for a three-year collaboration to create the nation's first emergency department focused primarily on rural senior citizens. They've dubbed it the Geriatric Emergency Department, or GED.

"The $4.5 million research collaboration will help seniors in Northern New England by combining emergency medicine, geriatrics and telehealth resources," Matt Leighton reports for WPTZ-TV in Burlington, Vt. "Medical officials said the GED will have resources, specialized care and protocols to deal with older adults. All emergency department staff will receive training."

Dartmouth-Hitchcock is well-placed to help rural seniors. It's one of only three Level 1 trauma centers in northern New England and has the state's only air ambulance service; rural areas rely disproportionately on air ambulance services. The program will be structured as a hub-and-spoke system, with Dartmouth-Hitchcock at the center and four telehealth centers in the region.

The program is needed because New England is one of the nation's most rapidly aging areas, and seniors who live in poverty are much more likely to live in rural areas. "Limited access to health services, workforce shortages, social isolation, and transportation problems are particularly severe in these remote regions," says a Dartmouth-Hitchcock press release.

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