EASY-Care Two-step Older persons Screening tool (EASY Care TOS)
The EASY-Care Two-step Older persons Screening (EASY-Care TOS) tool is a practice-based tool designed to help family physicians identify frail older patients. This article by van Kempen and colleagues is one of the first reports to describe the construct validity of the EASY-Care TOS by comparing it with other commonly used other frailty constructs, the Fried Frailty Criteria (FFC) and the Frailty Index (FI), and other related constructs: multimorbidity, disability, cognition, mobility, psychosocial functioning, and quality of life.
This validation study was conducted in six family physician practices among 587 older patients (mean age 77 ± 5 years, 56% women). The EASY-Care TOS correlated well with relevant physical and psychosocial measures and identified patients with a wide spectrum of interacting problems. These findings suggest that this may be an efficient method that can be used in primary care to identify patient groups that might benefit from more proactive and integrated care.