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The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services plans to propose a rule allowing states to combine waivers for three separate home and community-based services target populations. This continues the federal government's push to expand Medicaid funding to home- and community-based care……Technorati Tags: CMS,Medicaid Waivers
The number of elderly persons has increased dramatically along with the number of people with disabilities who are aging. The overall death rate from traumatic brain injury decreased with advances in long-term medical care, rehabilitation and social support. However, successful aging is more than simply living longer. It involves maintaining physical, cognitive and social functions (Aravich & McDonnell, 2005).
0 Rules to Promote Successful Aging in Survivors of TBI
Aravich and McDonnell suggest the following…
- Take care of the survivor’s heart
- Exercise the survivor’s body
- Exercise the survivor’s brain
- Feed the survivor’s brain
- Promote mental health in the survivor
- Avoid tobacco, alcohol and other drugs of abuse
- Avoid social isolation
- Protect the survivor’s brain
- Form more partnerships for individuals with TBI
- Look for greatness in each person (Aravich & McDonnell, 2005)
Aging after Brain Injury Information | Brain Injury Books & Articles
Social engagement among seniors can slow motor function loss and fend off overall age-related decline, according to a recently published study…..Technorati Tags: social engagement,LTC
Seniors' social activity slows decline, death, study finds - McKnight's Long Term Care News
Two young inventors have created a device, with the help of hands-on testing at a Fairfax County retirement community, that they say might change the way older Americans get news and entertainment.
Using modified MP3 players, computers and large touch-screen monitors in high-contrast colors for people with impaired vision, Charles De Vilmorin and Herve Roussel have created a digital kiosk that serves as a sort of iPod for older people.
Inventors Helps Fairfax Seniors Get Connected to Online News, Entertainment - washingtonpost.com
Voices
It was a beautiful, sunny, spring day as adapt rolled in a convoy of wheelchairs for two city blocks through the streets of Washington D.C. As a deep, male voice chanted in the background “Free our sisters, free our brothers, free our people now!” Sometimes the male voice would change the chants “To Our Homes, not nursing homes!” To me this was my favorite chant, to tell the world that people with disabilities have feelings and rights just like everyone else. “We are the People…” Abraham Lincoln once wrote for all the people not just some. He freed African American from slavery. Now it’s President Obama turn to free us in the health care reformed bill.
Community Choice Care Act allows people with disabilities the right to choose between nursing homes and their own homes, which makes sense in these economic times. Medicare and Medicaid pays double or even triple the amount for nursing homes making our national debt increase. Rather then giving people with disabilities a choice their natural basic right, to choose where and how to live.
Community Choice Care Act also stimulates the economy by giving jobs to the unemployed. Helpers, aides, and PA they help people with disabilities lives to make them much easier to live with. People with disabilities can do just anything attend college, to live on their own, and get a job to pay taxes to decrease the national debt with the right supports. However most people cannot afford to be helpers, aides, or PA, people with disabilities hire and fire their own staff without benefits. Helpers received minimum wage sometimes paying dues into a union that doesn’t always look out for their best interest. Before my trip, my helper had a bad toothache. Without insurance her tooth could not be saved. I felt really terrible about it as her employer but there was nothing I could do about it. McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell can pay their employees nine to ten dollars an hour for fast foods. Why are people with disabilities human beings with feelings and rights are below fast foods? It just does not seem right somehow.
Our wheelchair convoy went to the White House to talked President Obama’s spokes people to include the Community Care Choice Act in health reform. They refused so ADAPT took action. President Obama endorsed this act while he was a senator in Congress. What changed his mind? People with disabilities were good enough to believe and vote for him. Now we are not the majority. He is betraying a promise. ADAPT sent a very clear message to him. “We won’t go away!” I got arrested for standing up in what I believe in.
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This is a GREAT site! Everything you need to know about workforce issues in LTC. Great addition to PHI’s pantheon of resources.
PHI PolicyWorks | Information, Innovation, and Action for Quality Direct Care Jobs
Eli Lilly & Company's rap sheet as a public menace is so long that for Lilly watchers to overcome the "banality-of-Lilly-sleaziness" phenomenon, the drug company must break some type of record measuring egregiousness. Lilly obliged earlier this year, receiving the largest criminal fine ever imposed on a corporation.
If Americans are ever going to revoke the publicly granted charters of reckless, giant corporations -- well within our rights -- we might want to get the ball rolling with Lilly, whose recent actions appalled even the mainstream media. And with Lilly's chums, the Bush family, out of power, now might be the right time.
On January 15, 2009, Lilly pled guilty to charges that it had illegally marketed its blockbuster drug Zyprexa for unapproved uses to children and the elderly, two populations especially vulnerable to its dangerous side effect. Lilly plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge and agreed to pay $1.42 billion, which included $615 million to end the criminal investigation and approximately $800 million to settle the civil case……
The Case for Giving Eli Lilly the Corporate Death Penalty | Health and Wellness | AlterNet
"Latest research raises important ethical issues concerning our care for patients with chronic consciousness disorders,"…….
"This is all the more important as studies have shown that more than a third of patients given an initial diagnosis of vegetative state or persistent vegetative state show minimal signs of consciousness under more detailed examination."…….
Below are the short commentaries–now closed captioned–delivered by Professors Simo Vehmas and Dick Sobsey as part of a panel discussion on the theme The Modern Pursuit of Human Perfection: Defining Who is Worthy of Life.
Bioethical Reflections on Disability, Medicine, and Family Life (Simo Vehmas)
Decisions and Dishonesty in Medicine (Dick Sobsey)
Simo is one of Finland’s leading bioethicists who joined us for the panel discussion, while Dick is one of the world’s authorities on violence and disability and runs the ICAD blog…….
Vehmas and Sobsey commentaries: now captioned « What Sorts of People
Today is the 10th Anniversary of the Olmstead decision by the Supreme Court. This decision was the single most important result of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. The decision said that states couldn’t force people to live in institutions just because the state thought it was more convenient.
Federal law placed on states an affirmative demand that they work to allow people with disabilities to live in the community of their choice with the supports they need to succeed.
At this 10 year anniversary, it is worthwhile remembering why this is so important:
Let us take a moment to remember our brothers and sisters who are still living in institutions, and reaffirm our commitment to use the Olmstead decision to help them to live in the community of their choice.
