Imagine being able to receive fully integrated medical, social, and spiritual care in your own home. Nursing care is available 24/7. Home health aides provide basic personal assistance. Care is person-centered and focused on the specific needs of each patient. And for people with incurable chronic conditions, it focuses on managing symptoms, including pain, thus vastly improving their quality of [...]
Hospice is facing unprecedented public criticism. In recent months, The Washington Post has published at least four highly critical articles, alleging widespread instances of poor care and fraud. In June, The Huffington Post published a long investigative piece largely targeting the practices of the for-profit hospice operator Vitas Healthcare Corp. What’s this about? How did a movement aimed at comforting the [...]
The Obama Administration has announced its preliminary plans for the next White House Conference on Aging, which would be held next year. It would be the first such conference in a decade and could be quite valuable, given the rapid aging of the U.S. population and vast changes in the medical and long-term care environment since the last session. 2015 [...]
This week, The New York Times published an investigative report by Katie Thomas on Medicare’s five-star rating system for nursing homes. Among its findings: Medicare’s Nursing Home Compare tool relies largely on self-reported data by the facilities themselves and is thus unreliable. On one hand, this is a bit odd, since Medicare’s website explicitly describes these very shortcomings. On the [...]
When we think about the health of frail older adults, severe, high-profile illnesses such as dementia, heart disease, cancer, and debilitating arthritis come to mind. But for many seniors, small things can turn a manageable chronic condition into an acute medical crisis. One is malnutrition. Spend a little time in a hospital emergency department and you’ll be shocked at how [...]
What should you know before you move into an independent living senior community? To find out, I asked a long-time resident. But not just any resident. Len Bachman has been living in an upscale 313-unit independent senior community in Chevy Chase, Maryland for about a decade. In some ways, he’s very typical of his neighbors. Now an active 89, he moved in [...]
Earlier this month, with absolutely no fanfare, the Treasury Department announced what could be a major change in the way we save for retirement. It will now permit people to shift a portion of their 401(k)s or IRAs into a deferred annuity that provides a guaranteed stream of income once you reach old age. The idea has the potential to [...]
Two take-aways from the recently concluded Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Copenhagen: First, after years of research, we still know remarkably little about what causes dementia or how to prevent or delay it. Second, the dementia establishment, including the Alzheimer’s Association and the White House’s National Plan to Address Alzheimer’s Disease, is so focused on a cure that it pays [...]
For well over a decade, we’ve been tantalized by digital technology’s potential to assist family caregivers. They surely could use help managing the enormous challenges of caring for a loved one. And enterprising technologists could get very rich creating the right gizmos. Yet, while digital tech has profoundly changed the rest of our lives over the past few decades, it has [...]
Frail seniors getting supports and services at home are more likely to be hospitalized than those living in nursing homes, even though those in nursing facilities are often sicker than those in the community, according to a new study in the June issue of the journal Health Services Research (behind a paywall). The study finds that seniors receiving care at [...]