EVALUATE: Pathways

The Frailty Pathways Toolkit is a standardised toolkit for the planning, provision, and evaluation of frailty pathways of care.    It was developed in order to understand the scope, range and effectiveness of frailty pathways and was led by academic and clinical experts from our frailty iCARE Community of Practice.

The approach taken included a scoping exercise of UK Clinical Commissioning Groups that indicated while different pathways of frailty care exist, robust evidence of effectiveness of outcomes was limited.   This was followed up by a literature view that found there is little consistency in the composition of frailty pathways and that evaluation and comparison of them is challenging due to inconsistencies and differences in what outcomes are being measured and what evaluation methods are used.   It was also noted to be essential to consider process, determining factors and implementation evaluation.

It was concluded that to achieve effective pathways and meaningful evaluations, a standardised method for planning, provision, and evaluation of frailty pathways of care was required.  Consequently an expert panel of academics and professional clinicians with expertise in planning, delivering or evaluating frailty services was established and the framework was developed.

“Well done on progressing this fantastic and much needed work!”  

Dr Mike Azad,

Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust and Co-Chair Frailty in Urgent Care Settings Special Interest Group, British Geriatric Society