LSU and Ochsner Health Expand Partnership, Leadership in Dementia Care
March 12, 2025
Louisiana ranks fifth in the nation for Alzheimer’s disease, which mostly impacts older adults and is among the leading causes of death.
The majority of patients with Alzheimer’s or dementia never get a formal diagnosis from a specialist—a critical care gap LSU and Ochsner Health have partnered to bridge. Illustration by LSU student Nam Nguyen.
With only 50 certified geriatricians in the state—physicians who specialize in the treatment of older people—it is often difficult to diagnose and treat dementia as well as other diseases and injuries, from heart problems to broken bones, in patients with dementia.
But thanks to a growing partnership between LSU and Ochsner Health, dementia care is improving. Recently, Ochsner Health’s MedVantage Clinic in New Orleans became recognized as an Age-Friendly Health Systemby the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in partnership with the American Geriatrics Society and the American Hospital Association, getting the highest recognition of its kind, “Committed to Care Excellence.” This achievement was a direct result of teaming up with LSU to implement the “4Ms framework,” which are four core principles of high-quality care: what matters most, medication, mentation, and mobility.
“Ideally, we want every healthcare provider to think about the 4Ms every time they encounter an older adult,” said Dr. Erika Diaz-Narvaez, a geriatrician at Ochsner Health New Orleans and co-lead for the project with LSU. “Does this person have memory problems? Do they have delirium or depression? Is their medication causing any side effects? How is their mobility? And what matters most to them? Asking questions like these leads to better outcomes for our patients and their families, and the hope is that we’re making more treatment plans based on our patients, not just guidelines.”
Dr. Erika Diaz-Narvaez at Ochsner Health.
Dr. Diaz-Narvaez sees patients and educates residents at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans. In collaboration with LSU and Ochsner colleagues, she participates in multidisciplinary clinics and monthly online trainings for doctors, nurses, social workers, and other healthcare professionals.
“Our project has grown exponentially, and a lot has changed,” said Matthew Estrade, project manager at Ochsner Health. “Now we’re reaching other clinics and providers in Louisiana, Mississippi, and beyond. There is never going to be enough geriatricians, so we’re working with LSU to make sure primary care providers know how to address these things for older adults.”
A core component of the project is to train primary care doctors, since many patients with dementia, especially in rural areas, rarely see a specialist such as a neurologist. Since 2019, the LSU-Ochsner team has educated and trained more than 500 doctors and medical students, over 600 nurses and nursing students and faculty, and close to 1,500 social workers and social work students and faculty on how to better diagnose and treat people with dementia.
Team leader for the effort is Scott E. Wilks, professor of social work and director of the Healthy Aging Research Center at LSU. In 2019, he earned an award of nearly $4 million from the Health Resources and Services Administration, a federal agency under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, for the ongoing collaboration with Ochsner, called the Louisiana Geriatrics Workforce Education Program. Then, in 2024, the partners received a second grant of $5 million from the same agency to expand their efforts into what is now the Louisiana-Mississippi Geriatrics Workforce Education Program.
“By 2030, older Americans will account for nearly 30 percent of the nation’s population, so the need for this work is dramatic.”
Scott E. Wilks, LSU Professor of Social Work
In Louisiana, there is one certified geriatrician for every 8,000 older adults. Meanwhile, only one in every 25 social workers and one in every 100 registered nurses are specialized or certified in geriatrics.
“Our main goal is to try to bridge the gap between the care people with dementia get from their primary care providers and the care they would be getting if they went to a specialist,” Wilks said. “We’ve seen a significant number of misdiagnoses, neglected diagnoses, and too-broad diagnoses, which then lead to a whole host of issues with medication and treatment plans. That’s why we train medical professionals and caregivers on the symptoms to look for and on proper testing for dementia, including the type and stage, because if there’s a disconnect in primary care practice, we’re getting one or both wrong.”
Dementia is not just one disease but a group of conditions that affect the brain and therefore impact memory, thinking, behavior, and emotion. Collectively, dementias are the leading cause of disability and dependency among older adults, and they’re phenomenally costly. If dementias were a country, it would be the 17th largest economy in the world. The unpaid work families do to provide in-home, daily care for loved ones with dementia is equivalent to $300 billion annually.
The monthly trainings LSU and Ochsner provide use an educational model called ECHO, short for Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes. Starting in November 2021 with about 20 healthcare providers in attendance, the trainings—36 to date—now regularly attract 100 professionals who want to learn about older adult care.
In addition to ECHO, LSU and Ochsner host four in-person dementia trainings each year: the Alzheimer’s Services Educational Conference, as well as three other virtual trainings. They also organize a multidisciplinary panel where experts on Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias—including a physician, nurse, social worker, and family caregiver—answer questions. The partnership has led to the first dementia-focused curriculum requirements being implemented for nursing students at Chamberlain University in New Orleans, physician assistant students at Xavier University, and for medical students at the University of Queensland-Ochsner Clinical School at Ochsner Medical Center.
Another direct outcome of the LSU-Ochsner collaboration is how Ochsner physicians now access 4M-type data in their patients’ electronic medical records.
“Someone’s medical record usually contains a lot of 4M data, but it tends to be spread out throughout the record and difficult to find,” Dr. Diaz-Narvaez said. “So, we worked to create an algorithm, a dot phrase, that pulls all the relevant geriatric information into our notes. This helps us see at a glance how functional a person is, if they’ve been prescribed inappropriate medications, and more. We’ve now served hundreds of patients using this new capability, and we continue to reach more providers.”
The team’s work is wholly supported by Ochsner Health trailblazers in improved care for older adults, Dr. Susan Nelson, a geriatrician, and Dr. Kathy Jo Carstarphen, an internal medicine doctor who leads Ochsner Health’s MedVantage Clinic. They have big plans for the future in collaboration with LSU.
“We want to expand use of the 4M data and educate more clinics, including Ochsner clinics in Louisiana and Mississippi, to help them achieve Age-Friendly Health System status where we also can track how many older adults are seen using this framework,” Dr. Diaz-Narvaez said, with Dr. Nelson, Dr. Carstarphen, and Estrade all agreeing. “It’s been a great partnership.”
Read more about the 2024-2029 Louisiana-Mississippi Geriatrics Workforce Education Program: https://www.lsu.edu/chse/news/2024/harc-grant-for-dementia-care.php
Read more about the 2019-2024 Louisiana Geriatrics Workforce Education Program: https://www.lsu.edu/chse/socialwork/news/wilks_la-gwep_grant2019.php
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