I’ve heard a lot of reports about the staggering amount of fraud, overtreatment and unnecessary health care in the United States. But the recent “Best Care at Lower Cost” report by the Institute of Medicine included this stunner: In 2009, the health care system wasted an estimated $765 billion [1]– more than the entire budget of the Department of Defense.
The unsettling truth is that our best estimates of healthcare-associated infections in long-term care facilities, such as nursing homes, most likely understate the true problem," said Nimalie Stone, M.D., a lead author of the guidance and a medical epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). "Clinicians in nursing homes cannot prevent healthcare-associated infections unless they know where and how they are occurring. Tracking infections within facilities is the first step toward prevention and ultimately saves lives.
There is now strong evidence that some interventions can prevent falls in people over the age of 65 who are living in their own homes. However, the researchers who reached this conclusion say that care is needed when choosing interventions, as some have no effect. The full details are published this month in The Cochrane Library. This is an update of a previous report that contains data from 51 additional trials, enabling the authors to reach many more conclusions
THE human brain evolved to seek out foods high in fat and sugar. But a preference that started out as a survival mechanism has, in our age of plenty, become a self-destructive compulsion.
It is well known that bad diets can trigger obesity and diabetes. There is growing evidence that they trigger Alzheimer's disease too, and some researchers now see it as just another form of diabetes (see "Food for thought: Eat your way to dementia").
If correct, this has enormous, and grave, implications. The world already faces an epidemic of diabetes. The prospect of a parallel epidemic of Alzheimer's is truly frightening, in terms of human suffering and monetary cost.
Federal officials are threatening legal action after an investigation found hundreds of kids with developmental disabilities needlessly relegated to nursing homes designed to serve the elderly.
The state of Florida is confining children — some just babies — to institutional settings even though they could be appropriately served at home or in more integrated environments with proper supports, according to a U.S. Department of Justice investigation.
In a letter to the state’s attorney general last week, U.S. Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez said that Florida needs to take corrective action to come into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Otherwise, Perez said the Justice Department may file a lawsuit.
As many as a quarter of Medicare recipients spend more than the total value of their assets on out-of-pocket health care expenses during the last five years of their lives, according to researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. They found that 43 percent of Medicare recipients spend more than their total assets minus the value of their primary residences. The findings appear online in the current issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
Elderly people who regularly use the internet are less likely to suffer from depression, new research from a US university has found.
The research, from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, found that regular internet usage in retired Americans aged 50 and older reduced depression by 20-28% and helped promote mental well-being among this group.
group of Massachusetts residents with disabilities opposing legalized assisted suicide are asking Massachusetts voters to have "second thoughts" when they vote on Question 2 in November.Second Thoughts: People with Disabilities Opposing the Legalization of Assisted Suicide (www.second-thoughts.org) is a Boston based steering committee of disabled people from Massachusetts formed in 2011 to educate and organize the Massachusetts disability community to respond to the ballot initiative. The name "Second Thoughts" emphasizes that rather than offering individual choice, assisted suicide laws create a potentially discriminatory and dangerous practice.
According to the group's website, Second Thoughts seeks to move the context of the assisted suicide debate beyond simplified political divisions, "between conservative 'right to life' and religious groups on one side, and 'liberals' who support individual choice on the other."
Second Thoughts says it encourages voters "to look at assisted suicide in the real world" which it says is one "where insurance companies and other organizations try to limit spending on health care"; "where disabled people face discrimination through architectural barriers and unemployment while lacking in-home services to enable them to integrate into communities"; "where some people think it might be better to be dead than disabled"; and "where abuse and financial exploitation of elders and people with disabilities is at unacceptably high levels."
Many of you know me as ‘Ava, the gardening coordinator’, and it is true that I love our community garden! In addition to loving the Ann Arbor CIL garden however, I am also an activist and a member of the disability rights group, ADAPT. ADAPT is a national grass-roots community that organizes disability rights activists to engage in nonviolent, direct, action; including civil disobedience, to assure the civil and human rights of people with disabilities to live in freedom. ADAPT members from all over the country get together twice a year for an ADAPT national action. Thus, on April 21st I traveled to Washington D.C. to attend the spring national action.
How the system works is that the bus stop diffuses the sense of panic. For instance, if a delusional patient decided that she needed to go home immediately because her children were all alone and waiting for her, the attendant didn’t need to restrain her or talk her out of it, she simply said, “Oh, well, there’s the bus stop.” Thus, the patient would go sit and wait. Knowing that she was on her way home, she would relax and, given her diminished cognition, she would eventually forget why she was there. Staff can then approach the patients and tell them that the bus is delayed and invite them in for refreshments while they wait. Five minutes later they have completely forgotten they wanted to leave.This system has become so successful that many nursing homes throughout Germany and Europe have built these “fake bus stops”.