Vulnerable Elders Survey-13

The Vulnerable Elders Survey-13 (VES-13) is a brief, function-based screening tool that identifies community-dwelling older adults at increased risk of health deterioration, functional decline, and death. Developed by Debra Saliba, Neil Wenger, and colleagues at RAND as part of the Assessing Care of Vulnerable Elders (ACOVE) project and published in 2001, the VES-13 scores 13 items spanning age, self-rated health, six physical-function tasks, and five activities of daily living. Points are weighted and summed to a maximum of 10, and a total of 3 or more classifies a person as 'vulnerable' — a status associated in the validation cohort with a roughly fourfold greater risk of functional decline or death over two years. It takes under five minutes, can be self-completed by phone or mail, and requires no clinician, which has made it a workhorse triage instrument in geriatrics and geriatric oncology.