Jason Karlawish, MD, associate professor of Medicine and Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, testified before the Committee, citing results from a series of his studies examining voting rights for the elderly.
Karlawish, a member of Penn's Institute on Aging who specializes in older adult health care and related issues, recommends that to help break down the logistical and geographical voting barriers many older Americans face, the United States must develop a model for mobile polling.
"Elderly voters -- especially elderly voters who live in long-term care settings -- are at the mercy of others when it comes to exercising their right to vote," said Karlawish.
"Mobile polling means election officials or equivalent groups visit long-term facilities in their district prior to registration deadlines to encourage and solicit registrations," said Karlawish.
Along with Medicare, Social Security, pensions and health care, here's another disaster coming straight at us: long-term health care. Since we're not having much luck solving the other issues, many people and policymakers just prefer to not even think about long-term care -- and that's reflected by the low numbers of people insuring themselves and their family for the very likely visit they will take to a nursing home in old age. Besides, most of us can't afford the coverage or the care itself and are banking on the government to pay for it -- even if we or our loved ones have to spend down their assets first. But Medicaid is already straining and will be unable to absorb the crush of Baby Boomers coming and headed for nursing homes over the next 30 to 40 years.
In a paper entitled Long-term Care Coverage: The Missing Element in the Employee Safety Net the consulting group Milliman suggests that it's time for employers to consider adding long-term care insurance as a benefit -- with some help paying for it.On January 31, 2008, the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General (OIG) and the Health Care Compliance Association released a report arising from a recent government-industry roundtable called Driving for Quality in Long-Term Care: A Board of Directors Dashboard. The roundtable was held on December 6, 2007 and provided the long-term care industry with an opportunity to inform the OIG of issues surrounding board of directors' oversight of quality of care.
The report includes written summaries of the discussions that took place in breakout groups designed around the following 3 perspectives on the oversight of quality of care: (i) organizational commitment to quality; (ii) processes related to monitoring and improving quality; and (iii) outcome measures related to quality. In the report, a fourth breakout group also considered the benefits of, and challenges to, developing a Quality of Care Dashboard (i.e., a management tool that may provide a way to access and oversee performance on quality of care issues).The Practice Guideline for the Treatment of Patients With Alzheimer's Disease and Other Dementias consists of three parts (Parts A, B, and C) and many sections, not all of which will be equally useful for all readers. The following guide is designed to help readers find the sections that will be most useful to them.
Part A, "Treatment Recommendations for Patients With Alzheimer's Disease and Other Dementias," is published as a supplement to the American Journal of Psychiatry and contains general and specific treatment recommendations. Section I summarizes the key recommendations of the guideline and codes each recommendation according to the degree of clinical confidence with which the recommendation is made. Section II is a guide to the formulation and implementation of a treatment plan for the individual patient. Section III discusses a range of clinical considerations that could alter the general recommendations discussed in Section II.
Part B, "Background Information and Review of Available Evidence," and Part C, "Future Research Directions," are not included in the American Journal of Psychiatry supplement but are provided with Part A in the complete guideline, which is available online through the American Psychiatric Association (http://www.psych.org) and in print format in