The effects of outpatient geriatric evaluation and management on caregiverburden

This study investigated the effects of outpatient geriatric evaluation and management (GEM) on informal caregivers' sense of burden. We randomized 568 high-risk, community-dwelling older adults to receive either GEM or usual care for 6 months. At baseline and one year later, we assessed the burden e xperienced by their informal caregivers (N = 88). Compared with caregivers of participants in the usual care group, caregivers of participants in the GEM group were less than half as likely to report increased burden during t he one-year follow-up period (16.7% vs 38.5 %, p = .034). The findings sugg est that GEM helps protect the informal caregivers of high-risk older peopl e from the increases in burden that often accompany advancing age.