Sibley Memorial Hospital earned the bronze standard—Level 3 GEDA accreditation from the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) for the hospital’s leadership in providing Emergency Department (ED) care for geriatric patients under ACEP’s new Geriatric Emergency Department Accreditation (GEDA) program.

Washington, D.C.—Sibley Memorial Hospital earned the bronze standard— Level 3 GEDA accreditation from the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) for the hospital’s leadership in providing Emergency Department (ED) care for geriatric patients under ACEP’s new Geriatric Emergency Department Accreditation (GEDA) program.

“Sibley Memorial Hospital’s accreditation signals to the public that our ED is focused on the highest standards of care for our community's older adults,” says Jennifer Abele, MD, MBA, interim chief medical officer and chair of Sibley’s Department of Emergency Medicine. “Seniors coming to our ED can be assured they will receive the necessary expertise, equipment and personnel to provide optimal care. Our attainment of this achievement could not have been possible without the great leadership of a multidisciplinary Sibley team led by Nadia Eltaki, MD, FACEP, and Karen Pregnall, RN, CEN, RN-BC.”

According to ACEP, the new GEDA program is the culmination of years of progress in emergency care of older adults. In 2014, ACEP, along with Society for Academic Emergency Medicine, Emergency Nurses Association and American Geriatrics Society, developed and released geriatric ED guidelines, recommending measures ranging from adding geriatric-friendly equipment to specialized staff to more routine screening for delirium, dementia and fall risk, among other vulnerabilities.

The voluntary GEDA program, which includes three levels similar to trauma center designations, provides specific criteria and goals for emergency clinicians and administrators to target. The accreditation process provides more than two dozen best practices for geriatric care and the level of GEDA accreditation achieved depends upon how many of these best practices an emergency department is able to meet.  A Level 3 emergency department must incorporate many of these best practices, along with providing inter-disciplinary geriatric education, and having geriatric appropriate equipment and supplies available. 

About Sibley Memorial Hospital
Sibley Memorial Hospital, a member of Johns Hopkins Medicine, in Northwest Washington, D.C., has a distinguished history of serving the community since its founding in 1890. As a not-for-profit, full-service, 318-bed community hospital, Sibley offers medical, surgical, intensive care, obstetric, oncology, orthopaedic and skilled nursing inpatient services, and a state-of-the-art 24-hour Emergency Department. Sibley’s campus is also home to the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, Grand Oaks, an assisted living residence, a medical building with physician offices as well as ambulatory surgery and imaging centers. Sibley also will be opening its adult and pediatric Proton Center later this year. For more information, visit Sibley.org.