Complicated versus complexity: when an old woman and her daughter meet the health care system.

The healthcare system should embrace the complexity in the encounter with an elderly individual. However, we found that the immediate reaction from the healthcare system is to handle the patients' problem as complicated by complexity reduction. Shortcomings are that elderly patients with multiple disorders are difficult to evaluate and triage "correctly" for later placement in the appropriate continuum of care, although the findings of this case study also imply that with time the system instead took on an approach of absorption of complexity.