Appropriate care planning and care delivery with frailty is entirely contingent upon recognizing frailty, when it is present. We developed the PATH Frailty App to rapidly identify frailty in busy clinical settings through standardized assessment.
Our free PATH Frailty App can be accessed via the app store. The PATH Frailty App is a user-friendly frailty assessment method that requires no training or instruction. It is based on the Frailty Assessment for Careplanning (FACT) tool and is designed to reliably assess frailty in as few questions as possible. The app is based on the principle that mobility, function and cognition help describe the degree of frailty. The app identifies markers of social vulnerability. It includes objective cognitive testing to ensure cognitive impairment is not missed.
It can be completed by health care professionals or family members. The tool not only provides information on frailty level and the drivers of frailty but produces a mini-Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA) style printable report and links to care guidelines specifically developed for each level of frailty! So easy!
Ways to integrate the PATH Frailty App into busy clinical settings include:
- Health professional asks the caregiver and patient questions directly
- Caregiver completes the assessment using a device (tablet, laptop, desktop) provided by the clinic in the waiting room
- Caregiver downloads the app and provides the healthcare provider with codes that allow even faster completion of the assessment