Frailty Assessment Calculator
The Johns Hopkins Frailty Assessment Calculator is an evidence-based method to assess frailty across clinical and research settings. It assigns a frailty score based on five standardized measurements in order to assess patient risk and prioritize care.
Assessing Patient Risk
Why Identifying Frailty Matters
Physical frailty in older adults is a clinically recognizable state of increased vulnerability to adverse health outcomes such as disability, falls, institutionalization and death. It is often defined as a medical syndrome that results from age-associated declines across multiple physiologic systems. Clinicians and researchers need a standardized method to consistently and accurately identify those patients who are most frail to better manage their care. Hundreds of studies have shown frailty to be useful in assessing patient risk.
The Johns Hopkins Frailty Assessment Calculator is used in both surgical and transplant services to reduce post-surgical complications, alleviate pain and suffering, and improve quality of life, which can result in savings of millions of dollars in healthcare costs annually.
Program Components
How the Frailty Assessment
Calculator Works
The Hopkins Frailty Assessment Calculator is one of the most commonly utilized and cited tools available for researchers and clinicians. It allows a clinician or researcher to enter five standardized measurements, based on the following five phenotypic criteria for frailty:
- Unintentional weight loss
- Exhaustion
- Low energy expenditure
- Low grip strength
- Slowed walking speed
The output is a single score that is automatically generated, providing a classification of either frail (score 3-5), pre-frail (score 1 or 2), or robust (score 0).
Product Features
- Access to the online Frailty Assessment Calculator
- Training video
- User’s guide
- Frailty Assessment forms
Other components needed to capture standardized measurements (not included):
- Dynamometer (grip strength measurement tool)
- Stop Watch (to time walking speed movement)
- Tape Measure (to lay out 4-meter walking course)
- Stadiometer (or other height measurement tool)
- Scale for weight measurement
Get the Frailty Risk Assessment Calculator
| What’s Included | Trial | Basic License | Full License |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free | $39.99 annually | $259.99 (1st yr) $39.99 annually thereafter |
| Frailty Assessment Calculator (online access) | 5 calculations/scores | Unlimited calculations | Unlimited calculations |
| Training Video (online access) |  | | |
| Guidebook (online access) Facilitates the implementation and utilization of the Frailty Assessment Calculator into clinical and research practice | | | |
| Database Downloadable Access-based software to store patient data for longitudinal references trends/studies. This feature allows for reporting capabilities to summarize population characteristics and longitudinal trends. | | ||
| Consultation (telephone consult with frailty assessment expert, up to 1 hour) | | ||
| Select Version |
Learn About Frailty
Frailty Assessment Calculator Resources
Frailty Assessment Tool Overview
Overview of the Johns Hopkins Frailty Assessment Calculator, an online tool designed to help clinicians and researchers identify patient frailty.
Frailty in Older Adults: Evidence of a Phenotype
Original study to provide a standardized definition for frailty, used as evidence to help guide the development of the Frailty Assessment Calculator. Originally published in The Journals of Gerontology.
About the Innovator
The Frailty Assessment Calculator was developed from research conducted by Jeremy Walston, M.D., who served as the Raymond and Anna Lublin Professor of Medicine in the Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a core faculty member in the Center of Aging and Health.
Dr. Walston worked with a multidisciplinary team of investigators and trainees focused on aging and frailty to develop an outstanding clinical translational research program, focusing on the identification of age-related molecular and physiological changes that contribute to frailty and chronic disease states, and the translation of these findings into clinically relevant interventions. As part of this effort, he helped to develop the most commonly utilized definition of frailty, and used this phenotype to identify inflammatory, endocrinological, and renin angiotensin system-related pathways that influence frailty and late-life decline. He authored more than 200 peer-reviewed publications and received numerous awards and prizes for his research.
The frailty phenotype was developed by Fried, Tangen, Walston, and colleagues in the Cardiovascular Health Study in 2001. The frailty phenotype was validated by Bandeen-Roche and colleagues in the Women’s Health and Aging Studies in 2006.
Learn More
Improve outcomes and reduce costs through accurate, standardized frailty assessment.