Preventive geriatrics: basic principles for primary care physicians.

The goal of preventive geriatrics is to nurture a state of health that allows maximal active life expectancy while maintaining high levels of function. The physician's role in promoting such a state of health is disease prevention and the control of chronic diseases of aging. Barriers such as insufficient time and/or staff resources and insufficient third-party reimbursement restrict the delivery of multiple risk factor intervention and healthy aging counseling in the office setting. A systematic approach to preventive geriatrics proposed by the U.S. Prevention Services Task Force is discussed.