Farm Policy is Health Policy
Now that we’ve all stuffed our faces this past week, it seems appropriate to talk about food. As I’ve mentioned before, preventative medicine needs to be improved in this country, especially if our health reform.
Sen. Corker: Long-Term Care is “Heading for a National Crisis”
Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn) warned today that long-term care financing is “a major train wreck” and “heading for a national crisis.” Corker, the senior Republican on the Senate Aging Committee, said he was very worried about the viability of private long-term care insurance and added , “there is no doubt there is a public sector role” [...]
What Would Happen to Senior Care if the Supreme Court Strikes Down Health Reform
The fate of many important health reforms aimed directly at seniors is in the hands of the Supreme Court. While the public has focused most of its attention on whether the High Court will strike down the individual mandate in the 2010 health reform law, the justices today are hearing arguments about another critical issue: What should happen to the [...]
The Role Home Health Aides Should Play in Caring for the Frail Elderly
I spent this morning at an interesting Capitol Hill conference on an important—but often ignored —topic: What role should home health aides play in the delivery of care to people with chronic disease? Health care providers and policy experts are spending lots of time thinking about ways to better integrate medical and personal care. They [...]
We Need to Connect Medical and Social Care for Seniors
Eighty-give percent of physicians say that unmet social needs lead to worse health outcomes, according to a new survey sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. But only 20 percent are confident in their ability to help patients and their families meet those needs. Talk about good news and bad news! The survey asked about [...]
Before and After Medicare
Recently ran across a a vignette that described the hospital care that was available to older people in the pre-Medicare years. The writer recalls visiting a hospital and seeing wards full of frail old people… My…Paternal Grandmother died in one of those wards. My last memory of her was seeing her in a urine soaked hospital bed in one of… Read more →
Taking a Stand
As a doctor and a blogger and a friend of elders I tend to steer clear of electoral politics. After all members of all political parties (and their loved ones) grow old. Aging is an equal opportunity experience. For the most part I think America has done pretty well balancing the needs and demands of opposing interest groups and factions…. Read more →
Doing Harm First
THIS is an excellent exploration of how and why our medical system manages to do so much harm to so many people. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have estimated that almost 100,000 Americans now die from hospital-acquired infections alone, and that most of these are preventable. People like Carole LaRocca are the human face of this travesty. One… Read more →
The Senior Emergency Center
On the Facebook, Patricia G. Kallsen writes… Videos are fine; please share a few quotes from your talk on “senior ED”–a new concept for some of us. thanks This is a fun challenge to boil things down. 1) Typical emergency departments are optimized for the acute care of ill and injured adults and children. People who have accompanied frail older… Read more →
Fear of the Unknown
Simple things can work surprisingly well. Consider this insight from Atul Gawande for example… When there is no way of knowing exactly how long our skeins will run—and when we imagine ourselves to have much more time than we do—our every impulse is to fight, to die with chemo in our veins or a tube in our throats or fresh… Read more →
Gone Missing
Americans often cite Japan as the country with the most respect for elders. In fact, there is considerable prestige given to older people in Japan and even a national holiday in their honor. There are also some embarrassing lapses which expose a gap between rhetoric and practice. The BBC reports… Tokyo’s reputed oldest woman has been missing for decades, Japanese… Read more →
“Baby, Just Can’t Steer”
Al Power checks in early with this gem… A decade past, Prince saw delirium as a positive force–falling in love. Soulja Boy took it a step farther: “That’s when I start to fall.” Now that’s a concept geriatricians can latch onto. The real dangers of geriatric delirium are spelled out in detail in this week’s issue of JAMA. A meta-analysis… Read more →
truly a beautiful thing
This blog gets some mighty powerful comments…. My 92-year-old mother with advanced dementia still lives at home and attends an Eden-accredited day centre. Six weeks ago I received a call from the acting manager to say they were finding my mother’s behaviour very challenging and wanted to bring in their ‘Dementia Behaviour Management Advisory’ team to assess and advise. Would… Read more →
Growth: Six Steps to Implementing Change
Here is something new from the Eden Alternative. Become the expert in your home for culture change; not just for yourself but for your team, your organization and the Elders you serve. Learn to overcome the challenges in the complex world of long-term care by creating an action plan specific to your home. It does not matter whether one is… Read more →
Enough with the Robot Baby Seal
The people behind Paro the Robot Baby Seal seem to have retained the world’s best public relations firm. They’ve scored stories in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. I don’t get it. Or, maybe, I do get it and I hate admitting the ugly truth. American culture sees aging as primarily a matter of technical failure. Our… Read more →
Power-Up Friday
My take on where health care reform is headed seems an awful lot like a skit from an old Monty Python LP, that starts like this: (Ominous music) Voice Over: (Michael Palin) June the 4th, 1973, was much like any other summer’s day in Peterborough, and Ralph Melish, a file clerk at an insurance company, was on his way to work… Read more →
Power-Up Friday #1
On Monday, NPR broadcast the results of a poll that shows that nearly 3/4 of physicians surveyed favor some sort of public option for health care insurance, either alone (10%) or in combination with private options (63%). Widespread support was also found among AMA members, even though the organization has an official stand against a public option. Polls of the… Read more →
Don’t argue with the Crazies
Wow. We’ve gotten a lot of email responding to Dr. Bill’s video post debunking internet conspiracies about euthanizing older adults. It’s been overwhelming positive and constructive feedback. But I’m amused to find that a few folks out there truly seem immune to reason. One anonymous emailer went so far as to accuse Bill of lying and actually cited one of… Read more →
Euthanizing old people conspiracies are CRAZY
Look folks, this is an easy rumor to dispel. No one in Congress is promoting legislation that would allow or lead to government euthanization of older adults. It’s a gross distortion of a completely sensible provision to provide Medicare coverage for patients to sit down with their doctors (not government agents!) and discuss what kind of end-of-life care they want…. Read more →
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