“A lot of what's been done in the E.R. can safely and effectively be done in the home,” said Karen Abrashkin, an internist with the House Calls program and Mrs. Vitale's primary care physician. For frail, older people with many health problems, Dr. Abrashkin noted, “the hospital is not always the safest or best place to be.”
Geriatricians have warned for years about the ways in which hospitalization can accelerate older patients' decline, even when physicians succeed in fixing the medical problem at hand.
