The EGL House Call Program is a shining example of Weill Cornell's commitment to providing comprehensive care to the senior population and helping individuals live longer, healthier lives.
The program, which recently received a significant gift from the EGL Charitable Foundation to initiate its endowment, was founded in 1997 by Mark Lachs, M.D., M.P.H., Co-Chair of the Division of Geriatric and Palliative Medicine, and Veronica LoFaso, M.D., M.S., the Roland Balay Clinical Scholar. The mission of this program is to bring the doctor's office directly to the patient's doorstep, serving elderly patients who are homebound.
The House Call Program delivers several hundred home visits annually, including those from Weill Cornell physicians, nurse practitioners, and medical students. In addition, the program has benefitted from a longstanding partnership with social service provider DOROT. This collaboration reinforces a comprehensive care model in which isolated patients receive medical care and are connected with the surrounding community through intergenerational visits, meal provision, and care assistance, alleviating loneliness and increasing quality of life.
“The EGL House Call Program, like so many of our programs here, matches caring practitioners with patients in need,” says Dr. Lachs, the Irene F. and I. Roy Psaty Distinguished Professor of Medicine. “Through this important work, we have the opportunity to really change the lives of so many patients and their families.”
The program is now a significant part of the wide array of clinical services provided for seniors by the Division of Geriatric and Palliative Medicine at Weill Cornell, which is also co-chaired by Ronald Adelman, M.D., Emilie Roy Corey Professor of Geriatrics and Gerontology and Professor of Clinical Medicine.
Comprehensive clinical care is only one critical piece of the complex, multidisciplinary puzzle required to promote health in an expanding aging population. At Weill Cornell, medical care goes hand-in-hand with advancing research in the field and teaching medical students how to care for patients as they age.
The Weill Cornell clinicians who treat seniors work alongside world-class scientists who are tackling the diseases that often impact this population. Recently recruited stars like Gregory Petsko, D.Phil., Director of the Helen and Robert Appel Alzheimer’s Disease Research Institute, are unlocking the biological mysteries behind diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and helping to speed cures and treatments to patients.
“Discovering the right treatments, or possibly even cures, for these neurological disorders has the potential to drastically alter the course of aging in our society,” says Dr. Petsko, the Arthur J. Mahon Professor of Neuroscience in the Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute. “But, finding a way to prevent these diseases altogether would be an absolute game-changer.”
Medical education is another critical piece of the elder care puzzle. The students at Weill Cornell are among those who will shape the future of healthcare as the proportion of seniors in the population grows. These skills are so central to their education that all students are required to make at least one house call before they graduate and, through the new Longitudinal Education Experience Advancing Patient Partnerships (LEAP) program, many students will be matched with a senior patient who they will care for through all four years of medical school.
“Providing the best possible geriatric care requires a multipronged approach that includes clinicians, researchers and educators working together, across disciplines,” says Laurie H. Glimcher, M.D., the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean. “At Weill Cornell, this collaborative work sets the gold standard for patient care.”
