Compare methods

	Katz Index of Independence in Activities of Daily Living	Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment
Field	Social Gerontology	Social Gerontology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1963	1993
Originator	Sidney Katz and colleagues at the Benjamin Rose Hospital, Cleveland	Andreas E. Stuck, Laurence Z. Rubenstein and colleagues (meta-analytic synthesis)
Type	Ordered hierarchical index of basic self-care function	Multidimensional interdisciplinary diagnostic and care-planning process
Seminal source	Katz, S., Ford, A. B., Moskowitz, R. W., Jackson, B. A., & Jaffe, M. W. (1963). Studies of illness in the aged. The index of ADL: a standardized measure of biological and psychosocial function. JAMA, 185(12), 914-919.	Stuck, A. E., Siu, A. L., Wieland, G. D., Adams, J., & Rubenstein, L. Z. (1993). Comprehensive geriatric assessment: a meta-analysis of controlled trials. The Lancet, 342(8878), 1032-1036.
Aliases	Katz ADL Index, Index of ADL, Katz Activities of Daily Living Scale, Katz Basic ADL Index	CGA, Geriatric Assessment, Multidimensional Geriatric Assessment, Interdisciplinary Geriatric Evaluation
Related	4	3
Summary	The Katz Index of Independence in Activities of Daily Living, introduced by Sidney Katz and colleagues in 1963, is the foundational measure of basic self-care function in older and chronically ill adults. It rates whether a person can perform six fundamental activities — bathing, dressing, toileting, transferring, continence, and feeding — independently or with help, and summarizes them into a single index of functional status. Katz's central empirical observation was that these activities are lost in a consistent order, from the most complex and socially learned (bathing) to the most primitive (feeding), and recovered in the reverse order, so the index reflects an underlying organized process of disability rather than a random list of tasks. Decades after its introduction it remains the reference standard for basic activities of daily living and a building block of geriatric and rehabilitation assessment.	Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA) is a multidimensional, interdisciplinary diagnostic process that evaluates an older person's medical, functional, cognitive, psychological, social, and environmental status and translates the findings into a coordinated, monitored plan of care. Rather than treating a single presenting complaint, CGA assumes that vulnerability in late life is multifactorial and that problems in one domain spill over into others. Stuck and colleagues' landmark 1993 meta-analysis of controlled trials showed that CGA is not merely descriptive: when it includes control over the implementation of recommendations and structured follow-up, it reduces mortality, increases the chance of living at home, and improves physical and cognitive function. The same synthesis clarified that assessment alone, without the power to act on findings and to follow patients over time, yields little benefit. CGA thus reframed geriatric care around systematic, team-based evaluation linked to action. It became the organizing model for geriatric medicine units, outpatient geriatric clinics, and home-assessment programs worldwide. The method is best understood as a process, not a single scale, even though it is built from many validated instruments.