Aging

The Los Angeles County Public Health Department falsified the dates it received complaints about nursing homes as pressure rose to meet state deadlines for launching investigations, according to two employees. In a letter last month to county, state and federal officials,  inspector Kimberly Nguyen cited 11 cases in which she said the dates typed into the […]

Andrea Borondy Kitt’s husband Dan lived for a year and a half after his October 2011 lung cancer diagnosis. She’s convinced, however, that he might have lived longer had Medicare paid for a low-dose CT scan of his lungs that could have caught his cancer in the early stages. Nine months before his diagnosis, Andrea read […]

  Though not a part of the health law’s open enrollment period, Medicare’s enrollment period runs during some of the same time period. Changes to Medicare advantage and the so-called Medicare prescription drug “doughnut hole” are taking center stage. KHN’s Mary Agnes Carey and Julie Rovner discuss: MARY AGNES CAREY: Welcome to Enrollment Encore. What you need […]

California’s experiment aimed at moving almost 500,000 low-income seniors and disabled people automatically into managed care has been rife with problems in its first six months, leading to widespread confusion, frustration and resistance. Many beneficiaries have received stacks of paperwork they don’t understand. Some have been mistakenly shifted to the new insurance coverage or are […]

Americans older than 65 are more likely to have chronic illnesses and to say they struggle to afford health care – despite qualifying for the federal Medicare program – than are seniors in other industrialized countries, according to a study by the Commonwealth Fund published Wednesday in the journal Health Affairs. The findings, which are […]

Three years ago, the Obama administration offered hope to millions of overweight seniors when it announced Medicare would offer free weight-loss counseling. Officials estimated that about 30 percent of seniors are obese and therefore eligible for counseling services, which studies have shown improve the odds of significant weight loss. But less than 1 percent of […]

You hear it so often it’s almost a cliché: The nation is facing a serious shortage of doctors, particularly doctors who practice primary care, in the coming years. But is that really the case? Many medical groups, led by the Association of American Medical Colleges, say there’s little doubt. “We think the shortage is going […]

Seniors living in three states will need prior approval from Medicare before they can get an ambulance to take them to cancer or dialysis treatments. The change, which begins today, is part of a three-year pilot to combat extraordinarily high rates of fraudulent billing by ambulance companies in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and South Carolina. The […]

Health care systems experimenting with a new way of being paid by Medicare would have three extra years before they could be punished for poor performance, the federal government proposed Monday. The proposal is one of dozens of changes that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services wants to make to rules governing accountable care […]

Ever been lost on a new trail on a hike? Or confused between north and south in a new city? Or after a certain age, unsure if you really took that anti-cholesterol pill last night, or was it the blood pressure pill?  They kind-of look the same. GPS apps in your handheld may lead you […]