Aging
Medicare Patients Win the Right to Appeal Gap in Nursing Home Coverage
A three-judge federal appeals court panel in Connecticut has likely ended an 11-year fight against a frustrating and confusing rule that left hundreds of thousands of Medicare beneficiaries without coverage for nursing home care, and no way to challenge a denial. The Jan. 25 ruling, which came in response to a 2011 class-action lawsuit eventually […]
Families Complain as States Require Covid Testing for Nursing Home Visits
As covid-19 cases rise again in nursing homes, a few states have begun requiring visitors to present proof that they’re not infected before entering facilities, stoking frustration and dismay among family members. Officials in California, New York, and Rhode Island say new covid testing requirements are necessary to protect residents — an enormously vulnerable population […]
Estados exigen prueba negativa de covid para visitas a hogares de adultos mayores. Familias se quejan
A medida que los casos de covid-19 vuelven a aumentar en los hogares de adultos mayores, algunos estados han empezado a exigir a los visitantes pruebas negativas antes de entrar en las instalaciones, lo que ha reavivado la frustración y la inquietud entre los familiares. Autoridades de California, Nueva York y Rhode Island afirman que […]
A New Paradigm Is Needed: Top Experts Question the Value of Advance Care Planning
For decades, Americans have been urged to fill out documents specifying their end-of-life wishes before becoming terminally ill — living wills, do-not-resuscitate orders, and other written materials expressing treatment preferences. Now, a group of prominent experts is saying those efforts should stop because they haven’t improved end-of-life care. “Decades of research demonstrate advance care planning […]
As Covid Hits Nursing Homes’ Finances, Town Residents Fight to Save Alzheimer’s Facility
Marvin Querry, 86, was on his tractor, planting rye on his 770-acre western Missouri farm, when the call came in early November. It was the social worker from Barone Alzheimer’s Care Center, where Querry’s wife, Diane, is a resident. The facility would be closing because of financial hardship, she said, reading from a statement. It […]
Nursing Homes Bleed Staff as Amazon Lures Low-Wage Workers With Prime Packages
ERLANGER, Ky. — The sleek corporate offices of one of Amazon’s air freight contractors looms over Villaspring of Erlanger, a stately nursing home perched on a hillside in this Cincinnati suburb. Amazon Prime Air cargo planes departing from a recently opened Amazon Air Hub roar overhead. Its Prime semi-trucks speed along the highway, rumbling the […]
Seeking Refills: Aging Pharmacists Leave Drugstores Vacant in Rural America
Ted Billinger Jr. liked to joke that he would work until he died. That turned out to be prophetic. When Billinger died of a heart attack in 2019 at age 71, he was still running Teddy B’s, the pharmacy his father had started more than 65 years earlier in Cheyenne Wells, Colorado. With no other […]
Wartime Trauma Hits Close to Home for Scholar of Dementia
Oanh Meyer was a postdoctoral fellow studying the experiences of caregivers for those with dementia in 2012 when her research took a very personal turn. That year, her mother, a Vietnamese immigrant, began to show signs of dementia and paranoia that seemed to be linked to the trauma she had suffered during the long war […]
Nueva ley de California facilita el proceso de ayuda para morir
Durante su batalla de tres años contra el cáncer de mama, mi esposa Leslie soportó con dignidad múltiples rondas de un tratamiento terriblemente tóxico para poder pasar más tiempo con nuestros dos hijos pequeños. Pero después de 18 meses sin cáncer, la enfermedad volvió con fuerza en junio de 2003. Le fracturó los huesos e […]
New California Law Eases Aid-in-Dying Process
During her three-year battle with breast cancer, my wife, Leslie, graciously endured multiple rounds of horrifically toxic treatment to eke out more time with our two young children. But after 18 cancer-free months, the disease returned with a vengeance in June 2003. It fractured her bones and invaded her spinal canal, bathing her brain in […]