Screening Older Patients for Risk Factors Associated with Financial Exploitation

Abstract

Due to a variety of conditions, especially Mild Cognitive Impairment and dementia, many older people are defrauded of money they need to pay for routine living expenses and for out-of-pocket healthcare costs. Since most older persons do not have the time to recoup their losses, they must often make the difficult choice of foregoing expenses for needed health care. Not receiving those health services and perhaps eating less nutritious food can hasten a downward spiral, exacerbating often frail conditions that clinicians must manage. In this chapter, the authors present an overview of the medical literature on risk factors associated with increasing an elder’s vulnerability to being financially exploited. They also describe a national continuing medical education program to raise clinicians’ awareness of the issue and what healthcare professionals can do to help prevent the adverse consequences of the loss of their patients’ wherewithal to have a good old age.