A friend is about to have big surgery that will require a long recovery at home. She and her husband have no idea what to do. Another friend is the primary caregiver of a couple in their 90s—the husband has dementia and his wife had a stroke. The caregiver has no idea what to do. Another friend learns on a [...]
Here’s a word association game: I say, “long-term care” and you will probably respond, “nursing home.” But the truth is that there are nearly twice as many assisted living (ALF) and other residential care facilities (more than 30,000 in 2014) in the US than nursing homes (about 15,000). And there are more than 800,000 people living in residential care facilities, [...]
You probably saw the headline: Six die in a Florida nursing home in the wake of Hurricane Irma. They won’t be the last frail elders to die needlessly. Many frail seniors who were living on the edge are going to die in southeast Texas and Florida in the coming weeks. We will probably never know how many because most will [...]
My friend Dan Timmel died last week. You probably didn’t know him. But if you are a frail older adult or a younger person with disabilities who is a Medicaid recipient, a family member of someone on Medicaid, or a taxpayer, you owe Dan a great debt. Dan was a senior career official on the Medicaid side of the Centers [...]
By now you know the story—or at least think you do: A nursing home nurse sees an 87-year-old resident in cardiac arrest and calls 9-11. Despite desperate pleas of the call center operator, the nurse refuses to do CPR and the resident dies. Except most of the story isn't true. Lorraine Bayless lived at a Bakersfield (CA) continuing care community called Glenwood [...]
Assisted living and other residential care facilities are looking more and more like nursing homes. About one in four provide skilled nursing services, between half and two-thirds offer case management, and-- at least among larger facilities---two-thirds offer their residents physical or occupational therapy. More than one-third of residents will make an emergency visit to the hospital and more than one [...]
My dad, who had congestive heart failure, lived on the second floor of a garden apartment building that had no elevator. As the disease made him weaker, he could no long walk down the stairs. And for the last year of his life, he was trapped in his own apartment. An "outing" was a slow walk, and eventually, a wheelchair ride about 100 feet to the [...]
I spent yesterday with more than a hundred elder care professionals at the Seven Acres senior care campus in Houston. For a while they listened to me, but for much of the time I had the opportunity to listen to them. And what I heard was striking, and an important addition to the HSC Foundation's recently published study based on listening to family caregivers. We [...]
The Stanford University Center on Longevity has just released a trove of information on the health, living arrangements, and demographics of an aging America. The study, "New Realities of an Older America" tells the story of an independent, remarkably healthy population, but one that will present unique challenges as it lives well into its 80s and, eventually, reaches frail old age. For example, authors Adele Hayutin, [...]
Private long-term care insurance got a nice boost from a new study by the federal Department of Health and Human Services. The report, by the consulting firm LifePlans Inc, concluded that nearly 98 percent of those filing claims against their LTC policies received benefits, despite articles by The New York Times and others suggesting that claims denials are widespread. The study also [...]