NICE - assessment of frailty
Last reviewed 01/2018
Assessment of frailty
- how to assess frailty
- consider assessing frailty in people with multimorbidity
- be cautious about assessing frailty in a person who is acutely unwell
- do not use a physical performance tool to assess frailty in a person who is acutely unwell
Primary care and community care settings
- when assessing frailty in primary and community care settings, consider
using 1 of the following:
- an informal assessment of gait speed (for example, time taken to answer the door, time taken to walk from the waiting room)
- self-reported health status (that is, 'how would you rate your health status on a scale from 0 to 10?', with scores of 6 or less indicating frailty)
- a formal assessment of gait speed, with more than 5 seconds to walk 4 metres indicating frailty
- the PRISMA-7 questionnaire, with scores of 3 and above indicating frailty
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