aPhoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care System, Arizona
bUniversity of Arizona College of Medicine, Phoenix
Author disclosures
The authors report no outside sources of funding with regard to this article.
Disclaimer
The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of Federal Practitioner, Frontline Medical Communications Inc., the US Government, or any of its agencies.
Ethics and consent
This retrospective study was determined to be exempt from institutional review board review but was approved by the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Research and Development Committee.
Our study is limited by our older veteran population demographics. We chose only a subset of older veterans at a single VA center for this study and cannot extrapolate the results to all older frail veterans or community dwelling older adults. Robust individuals may also transition to prefrailty and frailty over longer periods; our study monitored frailty trends over 2 years.
CAN scores are not quality measures to improve upon. Allocation and utilization of additional resources may clinically benefit a patient but increase their CAN scores. Although our results are statistically significant, we are unable to make any conclusions about clinical significance.
Conclusions
Our study results indicate frailty as determined by 1-year mortality CAN scores significantly increased in a subset of older veterans during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic when compared with the previous year. Whether this change in frailty is temporary or long lasting remains to be seen. Automated CAN scores can be effectively utilized to monitor frailty trends in certain veteran populations over longer periods.
Acknowledgments
This material is the result of work supported with resources and the use of facilities at the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care System.
