Dr. Michael Malone, medical director of Aurora Senior Services, recently launched a smartphone app to improve quality of care for older adults. The app is called ACE NICHE.
The app provides caregiver guidance on two topics:
- Delirium in older adults
- Challenging behaviors of hospital older patients with alzheimer’s disease
The app is built to guide the assessment of the older patient’s history, their examination, their non- pharmacologic and pharmacologic treatment, and care transition. Additional features include practical tips for providers to consider, and touch-screen links to key references.
Many baby boomers shudder at the thought of nursing homes, for both themselves and their aging parents. Some are embracing the universal design concept, which basically means utilizing architectural and building techniques that can be used by anyone, of any age or ability-level. More and more builders are receiving requests from people who want their homes prepared in advance for the likelihood they or loved ones could have chronic conditions down the line. It can be a real cost saver to have aging in place features installed during the process of building a new home. To learn more about universal design, read How is an aging baby boomer generation changing the design of homes?
On the next page, let's take a look at some of the highly recommended chronic care management tips for home design, and see why they might be pretty solid home improvement tips regardless of your health status.
PREPARE is a program that can help you:
- make medical decisions for yourself and others
- talk with your doctors
- get the medical care that is right for you
Interesting approach
He was able to walk when he arrived at Illinois’ Cobden Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in 2008, government records show, something he can’t manage now. Speech therapy for the 57- year-old ended shortly after he was admitted, according to a lawyer trying to persuade Medicaid to transfer him.
While much of what Boswell says is incomprehensible, he managed a clear “no” when asked if he wanted to stay where he was. Cobden officials didn’t respond to telephone calls.
via bloomberg.com
The survey focused on 1,318 Americans age 65 and older. Key findings include:
- 46% of people currently receiving treatment say their provider did not follow up with them within a few weeks of starting treatment to see how they were doing - a critical component of effective care
- Among all respondents, very few understood the health risks of depression: only one out of five (21%) had heard that depression is believed to double an individual's risk of developing dementia and only one in three (34%) knew it can double the risk of heart disease.
“Despite efforts to rebalance long-term care, there are still many nursing home residents who have the functional capacity to live in a less restrictive environment,” wrote gerontology researchers Kali Thomas and Vincent Mor in the journal Health Services Research. “States that have invested in their community-based service networks, particularly home-delivered meals, have proportionally fewer of these people than do those states that have not.”
Nationwide in 2009, 12.6 percent of nursing home residents were considered “low-care,” meaning they did not need much of the suite of services that a nursing home provides. That proportion had declined from 17.9 percent in 2000 because of a variety of efforts, including OAA programs as well as Medicaid-sponsored home- and community-based services (HCBS).
via news.brown.edu
“Evidence continues to mount that the social networking made possible by Facebook benefits seniors more than any other age group by enhancing motor function, decreasing depression and eliminating the sense of isolation and being left behind in a technology-driven world,” according to Wyndemere’s executive director Erin Donaldson.
Friends and family members who provide assistance to older consumers should consider the ways they treat them as unaware, confused, dependent, at-risk, or any of the other devalued characteristics that American society commonly associates with old people. By treating older people as valued adults, they can provide needed assistance while decreasing their chances of generating conflict by threatening the older consumer's identity," the authors conclude.
The results showed that benzodiazepines as a class of drug were associated with a significantly higher (54%) risk of contracting pneumonia, after taking account of previous bouts of the infection, smoking status, and other serious and underlying illness. An effect of similar magnitude was found for the use of zopiclone.Individually, prescriptions for diazepam, lorazepam and temazepam, but not chlordiazepoxide, were all associated with an increased risk of contracting pneumonia.
A second analysis showed that the risk of dying within 30 days of being diagnosed with pneumonia was 22% higher among those taking benzodiazepines. And it was 32% higher within three years of diagnosis.
After a three week period of adding eight grams of fish oil to their patients' daily diet, the researchers found not only a significant lessening of pain and discomfort from bedsores - a 20 to 25 percent improvement, according to the Pressure Ulcer Scale for Healing - but also a more efficient immune system and a reduction to inflammation throughout the body. The results were reported in the British Journal of Nutrition and the American Journal of Critical Care.