The most important trend in care for the frail elderly and younger people with disabilities may be what’s called managed long-term supports and services, or MLTSS. This effort to combine medical care with long-term care would replace today’s disorganized, ineffective, and even dangerous system with one that can bring together complex care that’s being delivered by many different providers. Done [...]
I'm just back from a two day conference sponsored by the Catholic Health Association on ways we can do a better job integrating both medical and personal care for chronically-ill seniors. There may be no more important issue for the delivery of care to this population. If you don't believe me, ask Don Berwick, who runs the Medicare and Medicaid programs for the federal [...]
For seniors trying to manage multiple chronic disease, moving from one care setting to another can literally be a matter of life and death. That's why it is so important that health providers--doctors, nursing homes, hospitals, assisted living facilities, and home care agencies--work together to make sure that those moves happen safely. Too often in our poorly coordinated health and long-term care systems, those [...]