Williams et al with elderly patients who have cognitive deﬁcits including in this paper are those of the authors alone and do not imply Alzheimer’s disease (http://meded.ucsd.edu/cga/index.html). endorsement by the funding sources. Patients are seen by their primary care physician for initial assessment and diagnoses, and then a referral is made to SOCARE for further assessment and evaluation. CGA helps seniors maintain health, functioning, and independence, increases their treatment adherence, and decreases mortality (Stuck et al 1993; Reuben et al 1996). Concordance between older patients and their primary care physicians is a particularly powerful predictor of physician implementation of and patient adherence to outpatient consultative CGA recommendations (Maly et al 2002). CGA can require overcoming particular obstacles including physicians’ skepticism and reservations about its feasibility (Winograd et al 1993; Reuben et al 1995). As CGA evolves and costs are reduced, expansion to a broad spectrum of care settings and inclusion of educational components for physicians increases its acceptability to primary care physicians (Reuben et al 1996; Maly et al 2002). Conclusions Extensive research evidence indicates that the physician- patient relationship itself can offer therapeutic care to patients. A physician’s attention, warmth, caring, concern, and practical assistance, as well as accurate and open communication, can make a tremendous difference to the health of older patients. Through partnerships in care, physicians can signiﬁcantly improve their older patients’ health outcomes by effectively assessing and treating their biomedical concerns as well as supporting them in their emotional coping, their illness management, and their adherence to treatment regimens. With the implementation of general communication principles as well as the use of speciﬁc programs designed to improve senior health care from all angles of the care spectrum, many positive steps can be taken to improve care for elderly patients. Programs such as CGA can increase both physician and patient awareness and management of the complex nature of medical care for older patients, coordinating treatment on multiple dimensions in the biopsychosocial model of treatment. Acknowledgments This work was supported by a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research, by a g r a n t f r o m t h e N a t i o n a l I n s t i t u t e o n A g i n g 5R03AG27552-02, and by the Committee on Research of the U.C.Riverside Academic Senate. The views expressed 464 References Adelman RD, Greene MG, Charon R. 1991. Issues in physician-elderly patient interaction. Aging and Society, 11:127–48. Adelman RD, Greene MG, Charon R, et al. 1992. 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