Our Work

The West Health Accelerator at MGB is improving care for older adults across Mass General Brigham by hardwiring a redesigned standard of care within the hospital system.

To establish this new standard of care, the West Health Accelerator is implementing a set of interconnected bundles to drive and support system change at each hospital site.  

Learn more by clicking each bundle below.

Care Pathway Bundle

Implementing proven care team interventions to set a new standard of care 

  • Summarize what the bundle is and what the overarching goals are. 

  • Explain the problem/gap and how this bundle is necessary to address that gap.  

  • Explain what the work is building off of—what was already done and the impact that it had. 

  • Summarize what we are doing now with more specific/tangible detail and next steps for implementation. 

Dashboard Bundle

Advancing system-wide tools to enhance care quality and delivery  

  • The West Health Champions Program is an interdisciplinary educational program designed to equip healthcare clinicians with training in geriatric care and quality improvement—playing a key role in improving the care that we deliver to older adult patients at MGB.  

    Through this program, we aim to build grassroots knowledge of older adult care, empower team members across MGB to take action to improve practices within their unit and beyond and create a network of interdisciplinary champions that can drive sustained, system-wide improvements in the care of older adults. 

  • Most hospital dashboards track general performance metrics—like length of stay or readmissions—but overlook the unique needs and priorities of older adults. As a result, critical issues such as delirium, mobility, functional decline, and polypharmacy often go unmeasured and unaddressed. 

    Without geriatric-specific data, clinicians lack the insight needed to identify risks, tailor care, or demonstrate the value of age-friendly practices. Geriatric-specific dashboards make these factors visible and actionable—embedding metrics that reflect what truly matters to older patients, such as cognitive health, medication safety, and functional outcomes. 

    By equipping teams with meaningful, age-specific data, the geriatric-specific dashboards developed through the West Health Accelerator Dashboard bundle will enable clinicians to provide high-quality care that aligns with patients’ goals and values and ensure the best outcomes are achieved for older adult patients.  

  • The development and implementation of the West Health Champions program at MGB reflects and expands upon the foundational work initiated by Brigham and Women’s Hospital through their Geriatric Champions Program, Geriatrics for Surgical Clinicians course, and Geriatrics Care Improvement Committee. Read more about each of their initiatives below:  

    The Geriatric Champion Program (GCP). established at Brigham and Women's Hospital, was a one-year program to develop physician associate (PA) champions in surgery. Led by Lynne O’Mara, MBA, PA-C, this program consisted of six months of geriatric education aligned with the geriatric 5Ms (Mentation, Mobility, Medications, What Matters, Multi-complexity) and six months of Quality Improvement (QI) training with completion of a data-driven geriatric QI project. 

    The Geriatrics for Surgical Clinicians course was developed to provide training for surgeons, nurses, Advanced Practice Providers (APPS), surgical trainees, and other interdisciplinary team members about geriatric syndromes and age-friendly care. This course was last held in March 2024.  

    The Geriatrics Care Improvement Committee at BWH is comprised of nurse champions who promote geriatric education, leadership, and quality improvement on their units. 

  • Building on key lessons from Brigham and Women’s Hospital's efforts to enhance geriatric care, the West Health Accelerator is launching the inaugural 2025-2026 cohort of the West Health Champions program at MGB. This first cohort represents a pivotal step in MGB’s evolution—from siloed pockets of geriatric expertise at individual hospital sites to a unified, system-wide approach grounded in multidisciplinary collaboration and grassroots improvements to older adult care.  

    To stay up to date on the progress of the West Health Champions program bundle at MGB, please visit our Impact Dashboard.  

EPIC Bundle

Ensuring optimal care with standardized guidelines 

  • The West Health Accelerator EPIC bundle is a system-wide effort to standardize care delivered to older adults by integrating age-specific care pathways and order sets into the hospital’s EPIC system. Through the implementation of a new EPIC build, this effort aims to reduce care variation, optimize current manual processes, and equip clinicians with readily available geriatric care plans—achieving an elevated and sustainable standard of care delivered to older adult patients.  

  • EPIC is a critical tool that clinicians use to deliver, document, and coordinate care. Key geriatric issues—like cognitive changes, mobility risk, polypharmacy, and goals of care—are often buried, inconsistently documented, or completely missing from core workflows. Clinicians are left to remember critical steps manually or rely on workarounds that are inefficient and unsustainable.  

    By building geriatric priorities directly into EPIC, we’re not just improving the interface—we're changing how the system supports high-quality, consistent care for older adults at every touchpoint. These changes make best practices easier to follow, more visible, and actionable—ultimately improving outcomes for one of our most vulnerable patient populations.  

  • The West Health Accelerator EPIC bundle builds upon the Superior Treatment of Elders Pathway (STEP) order set, which was developed by the Center for Geriatric Surgery (CGS) in partnership with Mass General Brigham (MGB) eCare to ensure optimal care for older adult surgical patients. 

    The STEP order set, which is available for use across the MGB hospital system, encompasses pain management, mobility, sleep, and nutrition for older adults. Clinical program manager, Lynne O’Mara, MBA, PA-C, and Rachelle Bernacki, MD, MS, have already trained over 300 surgical residents, fellows, and PAs to date in utilization of the STEP order set and continue to monitor compliance to pathway elements. Amy Bulger, RN, MPH, GERO-BC, CPHQ has also trained over 400 nurses and interdisciplinary professionals in how to implement the STEP order set.  

  • The West Health Accelerator at MGB is designing a new EPIC build that will filter out potentially inappropriate medications, automate discharge summaries tailored to older adults, and hardwire age-specific order sets and care plans.  

    To stay up to date on the progress of the West Health Accelerator EPIC bundle, please visit our Impact Dashboard. 

     

     

West Champions Program Bundle

Building a network of geriatric champions among our healthcare providers 

  • The West Health Champions Program is an interdisciplinary educational program designed to equip healthcare clinicians with training in geriatric care and quality improvement—playing a key role in improving the care that we deliver to older adult patients at MGB.  

    Through this program, we aim to build grassroots knowledge of older adult care, empower team members across MGB to take action to improve practices within their unit and beyond and create a network of interdisciplinary champions that can drive sustained, system-wide improvements in the care of older adults. 

  • Hospitalized older adults often have complex, overlapping conditions that require a thoughtful and specialized approach to care. Yet most clinicians receive little formal training in geriatrics, and the number of trained geriatricians cannot meet current—and growing—demand. 

    This educational initiative is designed to close that gap by equipping frontline providers with the practical skills, clinical strategies, and person-centered approach needed to deliver high-quality care to older adults across settings 

  • The development and implementation of the West Health Champions program at MGB reflects and expands upon the foundational work initiated by Brigham and Women’s Hospital through their Geriatric Champions Program, Geriatrics for Surgical Clinicians course, and Geriatrics Care Improvement Committee. Read more about each of their initiatives below:  

    The Geriatric Champion Program (GCP). established at Brigham and Women's Hospital, was a one-year program to develop physician associate (PA) champions in surgery. Led by Lynne O’Mara, MBA, PA-C, this program consisted of six months of geriatric education aligned with the geriatric 5Ms (Mentation, Mobility, Medications, What Matters, Multi-complexity) and six months of Quality Improvement (QI) training with completion of a data-driven geriatric QI project. 

    The Geriatrics for Surgical Clinicians course was developed to provide training for surgeons, nurses, Advanced Practice Providers (APPS), surgical trainees, and other interdisciplinary team members about geriatric syndromes and age-friendly care. This course was last held in March 2024.  

    The Geriatrics Care Improvement Committee at BWH is comprised of nurse champions who promote geriatric education, leadership, and quality improvement on their units. 

  • Building on key lessons from Brigham and Women’s Hospital's efforts to enhance geriatric care, the West Health Accelerator is launching the inaugural 2025-2026 cohort of the West Health Champions program at MGB. This first cohort represents a pivotal step in MGB’s evolution—from siloed pockets of geriatric expertise at individual hospital sites to a unified, system-wide approach grounded in multidisciplinary collaboration and grassroots improvements to older adult care.  

    To stay up to date on the progress of the West Health Champions program bundle at MGB, please visit our Impact Dashboard.