Concordance with routine Clinical Frailty Scale screening in the frailty in European emergency departments (FEED) study

Background: Frailty screening determines who receive geriatric emergency medicine interventions that are of high importance for patient outcomes. However, post-implementation evaluations show around 50% older Emergency Department (ED) attenders to receive screening. Why and who are omitted from screening remains largely unstudied. This study gave opportunity to compare normal screening status to data from a targeted screening study.

Methods: The parent Frailty in European Emergency Departments (FEED) study administered the Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS) to consecutive ED attenders on 04 July 2023. This present study considered a subset of sites which provided retrievable CFS data from a “normal day” two weeks prior. Symmetry and dependency of missing CFS entries with observed variables were assessed. The frailty distribution was then compared with the parent FEED study data.

Results: A minority of sites (5/62) recorded CFS in retrievable format. 55 % “normal day” CFS entries were missing compared with 14 % consecutive attenders during the parent FEED study. While no pattern was evident in the FEED cohort, “normal day” CFS entries were more frequently missing with non-white ethnic group (76 %, vs 52 % with white group), self-presentation (68 %), and discharge home from ED (59 %). CFS distributions differed between the routine and research day datasets (p = 0.009).

Conclusion: Our findings suggest systematic, non-random omission of CFS in normal screening practice, disproportionately affecting people with non-white ethnic group and self-presentation. This raises concern for limitations when routine CFS data are analysed and prompts study and improvement of concordance with screening.