My focus on the importance of the medical director in improving nursing home quality occasionally gets pushback from family members who have had negative experiences with doctors in nursing homes. Those...
Optimizing CNAs in age-friendly delirium care
By
Shih-Yin Lin
Jun 14, 2024
Certified nursing assistants (CNAs) are the backbone to most long-term care organizations. In addition to national efforts to increase CNA wages and benefits and standardize CNA career pathway models currently...
Getting your steps in
By
Gary Tetz
May 30, 2024
I and most other humans I know are obsessed with steps, and not just of the 12 variety. We wear tracking devices 24/7, like an entire society under house arrest, and monitor step counts with religious...
The Northwoods, summer reflections and the ICD-10 connection
By
Joel VanEaton
Jun 11, 2024
When I was 11 and 12 years old, my older brother and I spent two summers with my grandparents, who lived on a lake in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. It was spectacular. They owned 10 acres of undeveloped,...
Rolling the DICE on dementia care
By
Martie Moore
Jun 07, 2024
The Mother loved flowers, gardening and butterflies. She was a master shopper and enjoyed the hunt for a good sale. The first incident occurred in a butterfly exhibit. Butterflies were flying around them,...
‘Plateaued’ is not a medical description
By
Jean Wendland Porter
May 28, 2024
I’m starting to sound like a broken record (vinyl is coming back; the kids know what I mean), but I recently heard a therapist say the patient’s progress plateaued, so we have to stop therapy. Again. ...
Honoring the fallen
By
Michael Wasserman
May 08, 2024
It’s been more than four years since the onset of the tragic pandemic that took the lives of nearly a quarter million vulnerable older adults living in nursing homes. Their lives mattered. How they spent...
Have to, get to, want to
By
Julie Thorson
May 10, 2024
Mindset has been on my mind lately. How’s that for an opening sentence? The filter of “H-G-W” (Have to, Get to, Want to), specifically, is weighing on me as a leader. I believe approach matters,...
The smiling robot
By
Gary Tetz
May 16, 2024
When I was still a prepubescent boy with many questions, never once did my father take me aside and explain how smiles are made. As a result, I’ve always been a terrible smiler, simply because I never...
Implementing the federal staffing mandate will do more than just stir the pot
By
Zach Shamberg
May 17, 2024
How’s this for a truly perplexing recipe? Nursing homes are closing, access to care for seniors and adults with disabilities is being restricted, Medicaid reimbursement can’t keep pace with the true...