ENT Specialty Society Wins Grant to Embed Age-Friendly Care Across 13 Million Patient Records
Otolaryngologists treat conditions that sit at the intersection of aging and quality of life. Hearing loss, dizziness, vestibular dysfunction, and the cognitive risks associated with untreated auditory impairment are all disproportionately common in older adults, and all land squarely in ENT's clinical territory. Yet the specialty has not historically had structured, validated tools for applying geriatric care principles at the point of practice.
That gap is what a new initiative funded through The John A. Hartford Foundation aims to close. The American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Foundation has been selected to receive a grant through the Council of Medical Specialty Societies' Expanding Age-Friendly Approaches to Specialty Ambulatory Care program. The 18-month project will adapt the Age-Friendly Health Systems 4Ms Framework - What Matters, Medication, Mentation, and Mobility - specifically for otolaryngology practice.
What the 4Ms mean in an ENT clinic
The 4Ms framework was originally developed for geriatric care across health systems. Its application in otolaryngology has specific clinical rationale for each component. Hearing loss is strongly associated with cognitive decline and has been identified in longitudinal studies as a modifiable risk factor for dementia. Vestibular dysfunction is a major driver of falls - the leading cause of injury-related death among adults over 65 in the United States. Polypharmacy, common in older patients, raises the risk of ototoxicity and drug-induced balance impairment. And understanding what matters most to older patients - their communication goals, their independence, their priorities - requires explicit clinical attention that structured tools can prompt.
The initiative will develop two primary tools: a patient-facing pre-visit checklist addressing hearing, dizziness, falls, medication safety, and communication goals; and provider-facing interactive dashboards within the Reg-ent clinical data registry that track quality metrics and patient outcomes.
The infrastructure behind the initiative
The Reg-ent registry includes nearly 2,000 ENT providers across 200 practices, covering 13 million unique patients and 127 million clinical encounters. Linking patient-reported checklist data to clinical outcomes within that registry means the initiative can assess whether age-friendly tools actually change the quality of care delivered - not just whether they are used. Seven ENT practices across the United States will pilot the tools, spanning general ENT, otology, neurotology, and vestibular and balance care.
The Hart Foundation has allocated $1.5 million to CMSS for this program across multiple specialty societies. Findings will be disseminated through the AAO-HNSF's publications, annual meeting, podcast, and resident education curriculum, with the aim of scaling age-friendly practices across the specialty beyond the seven pilot sites.