Weill Cornell Medicine/NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital’s Vulnerable Elder Protection Team (VEPT) recently hosted a two-day collaborative meeting with the University of Colorado’s Vulnerable Elder Services, Protection and Advocacy Team (VESPA) that focused on multi-disciplinary Emergency Department (ED) and hospital-based elder mistreatment response.
Participants at the conference included members of both the VEPT and VESPA teams as well as collaborators from the New York City Elder Abuse Center (NYCEAC), Weill Cornell Medicine, and the University of Colorado. The meeting focused on the complexities of addressing elder mistreatment and the ethical challenges associated with elder patients. The group also explored diagnostic challenges, discussed imaging correlation, highlighted the important contributions of advanced practice providers, reviewed ways to conduct program evaluation, and identified critical next steps and future directions for the programs.
VEPT is a first-of-its-kind multidisciplinary team that was developed, at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medicine, to address elder abuse, neglect, and exploitation. This program served as the model for the development of a similar program, VESPA, at the University of Colorado. Both teams hope to increase the identification and reporting of elder mistreatment while decreasing the burden on ED and hospital providers in managing these challenging cases.
During the meeting, Risa Breckman, LCSW, was given a lifetime achievement award for her pioneering and transformative work in the field of elder mistreatment and her pivotal role in the development of ED/hospital elder abuse response models.
