Disability caused by age-related chronic disease is rising in every region of the world, requiring care that is safer, evidence-based, and responsive to what older adults want and need.

To meet this global challenge, IHI collaborates with governments, health systems, and professional organizations worldwide to implement the 4Ms Framework of Age-Friendly Health Systems: What Matters, Medication, Mentation, and Mobility.

Using improvement science and hands-on guidance, IHI empowers organizations to embed age-friendly care into daily practice across care settings, reducing harm, improving outcomes, and building the capability needed to sustain those gains over time.

Consulting with IHI enables:

• System-Wide Adoption: Health systems implement the 4Ms across hospitals, clinics, and post-acute care settings, establishing consistent, evidence-based care wherever older adults receive services.
• Improved Outcomes and Safety: Care teams align treatment decisions with What Matters while optimizing medication use, supporting mentation, and promoting mobility. Outcomes improve, adverse events decrease, and older adults and caregivers report better care experiences.
• Scalability and Sustainability: Organizations use improvement science to spread the 4Ms across departments and sites, moving from pilot efforts to durable, system-wide transformation in how care for older adults is delivered and measured.

Adopting age-friendly care practices is a starting point. Sustaining them across a health system requires a dedicated strategy and ongoing capability building. IHI collaborates with local, national, and global organizations to co-design adaptive, data-informed solutions that drive lasting, continuous improvement throughout communities.

Our goal is to equip your teams with the ability to deliver age-friendly care that is integrated, measurable, and self-sustaining, long after our active consulting engagement ends.