ABSTRACT
Anticipatory care of elderly people has remained something of a backwater, despite mounting evidence of unrecognized health and socioeconomic problems coupled with unmet patient needs. The chapter reviews the historical background, defines the objectives of care, analyses the controlled trials in this field and describes several ways of designing a program me to produce the optimum results. Doctors published the results of their work usually based on various types of screening involving general practitioners, health visitors, nurses and volunteers. The overwhelming majority of these studies reported unrecognized problems and unreported need. High-risk factors in the elderly are advanced age, recent discharge from hospital, and recent change of home, especially from another area and divorce or separation. It must be recognized that some older people have flexibility and adaptability which belies the effect of these conditions and merely to list such problems without taking account of this consideration can make such profiles actively misleading.
