"One of the most significant findings of our study was with the most psychologically vulnerable population," said Lichtenberg. "The combination of high depression and low social-status fulfillment was associated with a 226 percent increase in fraud prevalence in this population. This supports our theory that depressive symptoms and lack of social-needs fulfillment have an effect on fraud prediction, and serves as a reminder to clinical gerontologists how psychological vulnerability can affect older adults' lives in a variety of ways.
These pests can be hard to manage and, unfortunately, many facilities do not include fly control as a regular component of their pest management program. Controlling flies through prevention should be a crucial part of your pest management strategy. This can be achieved by implementing Integrated Pest Management (IPM) tactics. Instead of reacting to pest problems with chemical treatments, IPM focuses on proactively controlling pests through sanitation, facility maintenance and exclusion techniques.
According to the researchers, consumers with low care continuity were 14 to 15 percent less likely to improve their ADLs than consumers who have a high continuity of care.
"In cases where a patient sees a different aide from the one who normally visits, the new aide must acquaint themselves with the patient's routine, tastes, and preferences," the authors write.
"Rapid turnover and inconsistent personnel diminish the level of rapport and trust between the patient and aide, introducing significant obstacles to delivering optimal care," they add.
Rust said that in followup interviews, caregivers noted that they placed importance on treating people with Alzheimer’s disease with respect and promoting their independence. Yet, she noted that the caregivers’ actions did not always follow these goals or desires. She recounted the story of a lady whose husband suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. The man attended a day program at a nursing home, where he would take on a number of tasks that his wife had assumed for him at home. Rust said the woman was surprised that he was still able to perform these tasks as he had not done them in months at home. It’s an example, she says, of gauging the person’s abilities rather than making an assumption about the person’s ability based on societal beliefs related to the disease.
A strategy for long-term care that de-emphasizes nursing homes and assisted living facilities can provide better health outcomes and reduce costs, according to a new study.
University of Missouri researchers have implemented a program, Aging in Place, in which seniors remain in their homes and receive supportive health services as needed.“With this type of care, most people wouldn’t need to relocate to nursing homes,” said Marilyn Rantz, RN, PhD, FAAN, Sinclair School of Nursing.
n some cases doctors may even be making orders not to resuscitate “because” patients have learning difficulties, the three-year study concludes.
In other cases, it found evidence of doctors making more “rapid” and “premature” life-and-death decisions in cases involving the disabled than other people.
People with special needs are also less likely to be diagnosed quickly with conditions such as cancer and “all aspects” of medical care were “significantly” worse for them than for the wider population, it concluded.
As a result they can expect to die an average of 16 years earlier than those without a disability, it found. The gap rises to as much as 20 years among women.
via telegraph.co.uk
I doubt it's different in the US.
Today, Radu Dragusin at the Technical University of Denmark and a few pals unveil an alternative. These guys have set up a bespoke search engine dedicated to the diagnosis of rare diseases called FindZebra, a name based on the common medical slang for a rare disease. After comparing the results from this engine against the same searches on Google, they show that it is significantly better at returning relevant results.
The magic sauce in FindZebra is the index it uses to hunt for results. These guys have created this index by crawling a specially selected set of curated databases on rare diseases. These include the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man database, the Genetic and Rare Diseases Information Center and Orphanet.
They then use the open source information retrieval tool Indri to search this index via a website with a conventional search engine interface. The result is FindZebra.
The Association of Health Care Journalists has launched a searchable, online database that compiles thousands of federal inspection reports for U.S. hospitals since January 2011, HealthLeaders Media reports
via ihealthbeat.org
More than 20 years ago, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) mandated that all medical practitioners provide "full and equal access to their health care services and facilities." However, a telephone survey shows that many medical and surgical subspecialty practices are still unable to accommodate patients who use wheelchairs.
‘Why should surgeons have to wait until the patient has died as a result of withdrawal of advanced life support or even simple life prolonging medical treatment? An alternative would be to anaesthetize the patient and remove organs, including the heart and lungs. Brain death would follow removal of the heart (call this Organ Donation Euthanasia (ODE))…. Organs would be more likely to be viable, since they would not have sustained a period of reduced circulation prior to retrieval. More organs would be available (for example the heart and lungs, which are currently rarely available in the setting of DCD). Patients and families could be reassured that their organs would be able to help other individuals as long as there were recipients available, and there were no contraindications to transplantation.
Truly frightening!