Health and Disability

from The State Journal-Register:

Sangamon County Coroner Susan Boone says she and her staff investigate
virtually all of the deaths of nursing home residents in the county,
there are indications that some deaths may have escaped Boone’s
scrutiny.

Illinois doesn’t require all nursing home deaths to be investigated by coroners or anyone else.

Boone, who has been coroner since 1996, said her office receives notification from nursing homes of 90 to 200 deaths per year....

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from The State Journal-Register:

A 1999 state law that requires all Arkansas nursing homes to notify the
local coroner whenever a resident dies has reduced the number of
bedsores and accidental deaths in the facilities, according to the
coroner in Arkansas’ largest county.

The investigations are having a “deterrent effect,” said Garland
Camper, coroner in Pulaski County, which includes the city of Little
Rock.

However, Camper said his view of the law’s effect is based on anecdotal reports. No comprehensive studies have been done.....

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From NY Times:

A long-awaited government report is calling on the military to test all
new recruits for cognitive skills and then do large-scale studies of
returning combat veterans to better evaluate and respond to traumatic brain injury, the signature wound of the Iraq war.

For years, veterans’ advocates and researchers have called for more
careful investigation of head injuries — not just severe wounds but
also “closed head” injuries, which do not produce visible damage and do
not show up on CT scans.

Some doctors and veterans say the high
blast impact of I.E.D.’s, the roadside explosives that have accounted
for most head injuries to troops in Iraq, may be creating symptoms that
differ from the sort of concussions suffered in sports or car accidents. Many veterans have complained of persistent, sometimes disabling symptoms like sleeplessness, dizziness and confusion that can resemble disorders like post-traumatic stress and can complicate disability assessments....

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from PHI:

Japan is now where the US is heading in terms of a significant
shortage of long-term care workers. A recent highly publicized elder
crime spree in Japan provides a shocking example of what can happen
when governments don’t pay enough attention to social infrastructure.

Several news agencies, looking at Japanese government statistics
released last month, have reported that while the 65-and-older
population in Japan has doubled in the past two decades, crime among
the elderly has increased fivefold in a country long considered to be
safe....

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from PHI:

This year the first Baby Boomers started receiving Social Security
benefits. In 2011, they  will become eligible for Medicare — a system
most believe will pay for their long-term care needs.

This is false hope, says Bob Kerrey, a former Nebraska Senator and president of The New School in New York City, who recently wrote a Chicago Tribune opinion piece on the long-term care crisis facing the Baby Boomer generation.

“They are wrong. Just as they were wrong to believe they had plenty
of savings tucked away in the value of their homes and 401(k)
accounts,” he writes.....

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From US news & World Report:

Conseco's move earlier this month to shift roughly 150,000 of its
older long-term care policies to a trust overseen by Pennsylvania
insurance regulators is a shocker.

Notwithstanding a comforting letter to affected policyholders from
C. Everett Koop, former U.S. surgeon general, the jettisoning by
Conseco of a longtime money-losing book of business means that the
policies are now self-funding and can no longer look to Conseco to
provide financial support.....

Older LTC policies have been an industry problem. Many were sold years
ago when the concept of long-term care insurance was relatively new.
With scant actuarial evidence about ultimate policy costs, the industry
in general badly underpriced the early policies. Over time, LTC
policyholders have exhibited sustained longevity gains, meaning
policyholders are living longer than expected and posting
correspondingly higher claims for their LTC policies....

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from Medical news Today:

A report by a non-profit US medical organization suggests that military
personnel who suffer severe or moderate traumatic brain injury (TBI)
are at greater risk of long term health problems including
Alzheimer's-like dementia, aggression, symptoms similar to Parkinson's
disease, depression, and memory loss.

Titled "Gulf War and Health: Volume 7: Long-Term Consequences of
Traumatic Brain Injury", the report is published by the National
Academies press and compiled by a committee of experts working under
the auspices of the Institute of Medicine. The study was funded by the
US Department of Veteran Affairs....

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From physorg.com:

Many Americans have lost more than just retirement savings amid a
year-long economic meltdown that has sliced the U.S. stock market's
value by nearly half in a little over a year, a University of Illinois
elder law expert says....

"This is a wake-up call for
people who were willing to use their own resources for long-term care
expenses, figuring that they'd never outlive their savings," he said.
"The point is that now, after a 45 percent drop in the stock market,
they just might."

With the market-driven decline in the value of retirement assets,
many older Americans may be taking a second look at long-term-care
insurance, Kaplan said.

"But that insurance is a risky product that has only gotten riskier
in the last few months," said Kaplan, who wrote a 2007 paper that
appeared in the Lewis & Clark Law Review calling long-term health-care needs the greatest gap in retirement planning.

"Nothing has happened since then to make people more comfortable
with this product," he said. "What has changed is that people may need
to consider it because their other investments have declined in value.
But long-term-care insurance is even riskier today than it was just a
year ago."

Hefty premium increases for existing policyholders that have long
been charged by smaller insurers are now surfacing among the industry's
very largest companies, he said. Three leading insurers – Genworth
Financial, John Hancock and MetLife – had never before raised premiums
for existing policyholders, but recently bumped rates by as much as 18
percent, he said.

Those rate increases come as policyholders grow older and may have
no realistic alternative to paying higher rates, said Kaplan, a member
of the National Academy of Social Insurance.

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from Medical News Today:

Hospitalizations involving patients with pressure ulcers- either
developed before or after admission - increased by nearly 80 percent
between 1993 and 2006, according to the latest News and Numbers from
the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

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From McKnight's:

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services recently reminded
Medicare Part D plan providers of their duty to provide convenient
access to network pharmacies for long-term care residents.

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