There is a new way of elder care that's increasingly popular with both patients and their families and it's known as Slow Medicine.

I'm sure people working in nursing facilities and assisted living can attest to the amount of ambulances coming in and out on a daily basis, sometimes to take a person in for nothing more than a heavy cold. Why? Because 911 is the only option for many elderly people in facilities or in their homes. There doesn't seem to be a happy medium.

In a new book, a doctor says that family and friends of the elderly need to rescue their loved ones from traditional medical care. He points out that instead of a yearly mammogram, a manual breast exam may suffice for the very old, and home tests for blood in the stool may replace the draining routine of a colonoscopy. In other words, the pace of care should be slowed to a crawl. Do you agree with this thinking? Shouldn’t medical procedures become more aggressive with age considering the accompanying maladies?