Can primary care identify an 'at risk' group in the older population

The promotion of health and independence for older people through preventative strategies is rising up the public health agenda in many countries and has been made a government policy objective in the UK. Despite forty years of experimentation, community nursing and general practice involvement in this field has been characterized by a lack of evidence to support broad screening and surveillance programmes and a failure to reach consensus on the most effective approaches to health promotion in later life. One initiative brought together community nursing, general practice and the voluntary social welfare sector in an inner urban setting to proactively identify and address unmet need and promote health through short term case management in an older population. This paper reports on the ability of the primary care teams to identify 'at risk' groups in the older population, which can then be targeted for comprehensive assessment.