“The secret sauce of the Transitions, Referral and Coordination (TRAC) team was including a  lawyer.”  This is brilliant and will ring true to those of us who care for complex older adults who end up in the hospital for long, long, long admissions.

On today’s podcast we talk with Kenny Lam, Jessica Eng, Sarah Hooper, and Anne Fabiny about their successful interdisciplinary intervention to reduce prolonged admissions, published in NEJM Catalyst.  Many of the problems that older adults face are not medical.  How to find housing.  How to stay in their homes.  How to get a paid caregiver to help them stay at home.  How to get someone to pay bills.  How to assign a surrogate health care decision maker.  The legal obstacles to accomplishing these tasks for complex older adults, particularly those who may have marginal decision making capacity, can seem insurmountable.  Having a lawyer on the team is brilliant - in much the same way that having a handyperson on the team for project CAPABLE to keep people at home was brilliant.  For more, listen also to our prior podcast with Sarah Hooper on medical-legal partnerships.