When I saw the New York Times article illuminating the clever ways devious operators could inflate their Medicare star ratings, I had mixed emotions ranging from fury to rage.
Onward and upward — what’s motivating your job change?
By
Gary Tetz
Jul 21, 2014
After stealthily observing long-term care professionals in the wild for the past 15 years or so, I’ve come to see you as a perplexing and elusive study in contrasts. Perhaps you haven’t noticed...
Stop thinking — and eat a mango
By
Gary Tetz
May 22, 2014
Everyone struggles with who they are and their purpose in life. Whatever you do — whether you’re a long-term care administrator, director of nursing, med aide or maintenance associate — you’re...
Amazing Grace Superstar: The great question of sacred or show-tune music
By
Gary Tetz
May 08, 2014
Nothing is clear these days — in long-term care or life. Everything’s brutally ambiguous. We’re living an endless good-news, bad-news life loop, where all the things we think are good for...
Sentenced to a nursing home
By
Gary Tetz
Apr 29, 2014
Here’s an innovative new way, and maybe the only one you haven’t already tried, to make sure more people visit your lonely nursing home residents. Sentence them to do it.
Long-term (care) anxiety at bargain prices
By
Gary Tetz
Apr 10, 2014
The median annual cost of a nursing home room is now more than $87,000, according to a recent survey. To an uninformed member of the public, I’m sure that seems like a lot. But what the average person...
Passing the stress test
By
Gary Tetz
Mar 13, 2014
First came the razor, deforesting small circles on my expansive torso. Then came the electrodes, streaming off my chest like ribbons from a departing ocean liner. I wasn’t sure if I was being prepped...
The Sasha Experience
By
Gary Tetz
Feb 27, 2014
It’s been a rough day for good customer service, and since you live and work in a profession dependent upon it, I’m sharing these still raw and painful experiences because I believe they’ll...
Changing lives or just shoveling snow?
Feb 13, 2014
Like any good long-term care provider, I should know that to breathe a sigh of relief after weathering a crisis is to challenge the gods. Remember Brad, the nursing home administrator who left the deposition...
The year of the opinion
By
Gary Tetz
Jan 02, 2014
If 2013 was anything, and I’m not convinced it was, it was the year of strong opinions — even in long-term care. The fact that they were often biased, self-serving or blissfully fact-free seemed...