March 12, 2019 – CAPABLE Works

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Anchor lead: How can a program called CAPABLE help elders age in place? Elizabeth Tracey reports

CAPABLE is the name of an intervention that helps older people remain in their homes as they age, and it’s a win-win, a recent study found. Sarah Szanton, one of the program’s developers and authors of the study, describes CAPABLE.

Szanton: It’s just four months, and it’s a combination of a nurse, an occupational therapist and a handy person, a handy man. That means we pay attention to the home environment and the person themselves. In terms of resource intensive, it’s nothing compared to a hospitalization for example. So the program costs $3000 over four months, and it seems to save about 10 times that much per person, on average. And that’s mostly in reducing hospitalizations, so that’s also reducing harm, and suffering, and transitions as well. :32

Szanton says many states have already employed CAPABLE to both improve the lives of older people and reduce healthcare costs. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.