Leading Age

Fixing Nursing Homes Nine Small Steps At A Time

It hardly is news that nursing homes are in trouble. Consumers think they are unsafe; nurses, aides, and other staff are reluctant to work for them; hundreds of facilities are shutting and others are closing beds and even entire wings because they can’t staff them. How can these multiple problems be fixed? The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) [...]

By |2023-09-19T10:55:58-04:00September 19th, 2023|nursing homes|0 Comments

What New Nursing Home Staffing Rules Would Mean For Residents And Patients

In a long-awaited and highly controversial decision, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has proposed that nursing homes provide at least three hours of staff time daily for every patient or resident. Would it meaningfully improve care at nursing facilities? Not by much. The rule would require facilities to provide enough staff to deliver 33 minutes (.55 [...]

By |2023-09-05T11:37:08-04:00September 5th, 2023|nursing homes|0 Comments

It Is Time To Mandate Covid-19 Vaccines In Long-Term Care Facilities

It is time to change the rules: If you want to work around vulnerable older adults. You must be vaccinated. For their safety. For yours. And for the safety of your own family. Eight months after the vaccine was made widely available to health care workers, only about 60 percent of nursing home staff has been vaccinated against COVID-19. We [...]

By |2021-08-12T10:44:17-04:00August 12th, 2021|long-term care workers|0 Comments

How To Get Long-Term Care Workers To Take The Covid-19 Vaccine

As of Monday, only about 22 percent of the covid-19 vaccine doses that have been distributed for use in long-term care facilities have made their way into the arms of residents and staff.  As has been well documented, these residents—nearly all with pre-existing medical conditions and functional and cognitive impairment-- are the most vulnerable to serious illness and death from [...]

By |2021-01-13T14:57:02-05:00January 13th, 2021|nursing homes|8 Comments

Sorry President Trump, But A Few Masks and A Commission Won’t Help Senior Living Facilities And Their Residents

With great fanfare, President Trump announced yesterday that his administration would deliver about two weeks’ worth of masks to nursing homes by the Fourth of July . And he’d stand up a commission to study quality and safety in nursing homes. All just in time to celebrate May as “Older Americans Month.” The masks apparently are going only to nursing [...]

By |2020-05-01T15:34:17-04:00May 1st, 2020|long-term care|0 Comments

Why Are So Many Nursing Homes Closing?

Faced with growing pressures from payors, rising costs, the need to replace old buildings, increased competition from other forms of residential care, and shrinking demand from older adults who prefer to age at home, nursing homes are shutting their doors at a rapid pace. There still are more than 15,000 nursing facilities in the US—more, in fact, than McDonald’s franchises. [...]

By |2020-03-02T11:38:48-05:00March 2nd, 2020|nursing homes|1 Comment

How Providing Social Supports And Care Coordination May Lower Medical Costs For Seniors Living At Home  

What if real estate developers worked with on-site nurses and social workers to help frail older adults and younger people with disabilities stay in their apartments? Could they deliver--in a cost-effective way--social supports and care coordination that would improve the well-being of residents, reduce their health care costs, and benefit property managers? The answer is: They can, especially for older [...]

By |2019-08-07T15:03:07-04:00August 7th, 2019|Senior housing|1 Comment

What Do We Call Aging Baby Boomers?

Are you ready for a new debate over what to call old people? This happens every few years:  We’ve tried senior citizens, seniors, the elderly, elders, retirees, and even gerontos. Lately, “older adults” seemed to be catching on. That’s the phrase I mostly use though it is not entirely satisfying either. Older than who? Then there are the euphemisms for [...]

By |2018-02-14T12:43:53-05:00January 3rd, 2018|Aging|0 Comments

Proposed Federal Medicaid Caps Will Hurt Seniors. Here’s Why.

The Senate’s version of the House-passed American Health Care Act will almost certainly include a fundamental change in the way the federal government contributes to Medicaid. Over time, that new structure would result in deep cuts in the federal contribution to Medicaid and ultimately reduce long-term care benefits for frail older adults as well as younger people with disabilities. These [...]

By |2017-06-21T10:19:21-04:00June 21st, 2017|Health reform|0 Comments

Building Better Long-Term Care Insurance

Can the US do a better job of designing long-term care insurance? The answer is yes, according to two important new studies. With hard work and political will, we can develop better ways to help pay the enormous cost of long-term supports and services. The new research is a big step towards improved financing of these services. It did not find a “magic bullet.” But [...]