Relevance. Intervention in aging should be aimed at promoting personal growth and development, ensuring their activity and participation by creating conditions that prevent deterioration of physical, psychological, and social functioning. Assessment of the functioning of the elderly in the provision of medical care is necessary to ensure its effectiveness. However, medical care for the elderly still focuses on improving clinical indicators, although they are poor predictors of a decrease in the functioning of elderly patients. Objective: to study the tools for assessing functioning used in providing medical care to elderly and senile people. Materials and methods: Scientific publications from the abstract databases Elibrary, PubMed, Cochrane, Web of Science, Scopus, Medline, Medical-Science were studied. The search keywords were used in Russian and English: elderly, aging, geriatrics, senile age, assessment, evaluation, functioning, activity, functional abilities, basic functions, mobility, independence, autonomy, daily life, self-care, participation. Results. The tools for assessing functioning are numerous, their validity has been proven by numerous clinical studies. The most common tools for assessing functioning include: the Barthel Index, the Katz Index of Independence in Activities of Daily Living, the Functional Independence Measure Instrument, the Activities of Daily Living Profile, the Activities of Daily Living Questionnaire, the Australian Therapy Outcome Measures, the Melbourne Low-Vision ADL Index, the Self-Assessment Parkinson’s disease Disability Scale, the Frenchay activity Index, the Activities of Daily Living Profile Instrumental, the Lawton Instrumental Activities of Daily Living Scale, Performance Assessment of Self-care Skills, the Texas Functional Living Scale. The Barthel Index, Functional Independence Measure Instrument, the Activities of Daily Living Profile, the Frenchay activity Index, the Activities of Daily Living Profile Instrumental, the Lawton Instrumental Activities of Daily Living Scale are used by Russian researchers. There were no publications in the scientific electronic library «Elibrary» devoted to the intercultural adaptation and validation of Russian-language versions of most of the tools for assessing the functioning of. Conclusions. The features of the functioning assessment tools should be considered when choosing tools for assessing the condition of an elderly patient. Knowing the importance of assessing the functioning of the elderly, cross-cultural adaptation and validation of Russian versions of existing tools should be carried out.