With POC testing strategy, federal government continues to respond poorly to COVID-19 in nursing homes
By
Brendan Williams
Sep 08, 2020
In the federal government’s fight against COVID-19, nursing homes have effectively been left for dead. Despite a death count that began with the February outbreak in a Kirkland, Washington, nursing...
Skilled nursing care’s cloudy Medicare future
By
Brendan Williams
Aug 18, 2023
A net gain of $1.4 billion for a sector comprised of over 15,000 nursing homes somewhat pales in comparison to a looming CMS staffing mandate estimated to cost nursing homes $11.3 billion a year.
Facts, not anecdotes, must guide long-term care policy
By
Brendan Williams
Feb 14, 2020
An oft-repeated canard that bedevils advocates for facility-based care is the assertion, by an organization that peddles Medicare insurance products, that “90% of people don’t want to be in a nursing...
NY Tough campaign can’t disguise nursing home cuts that worsened COVID-19 struggles
By
Brendan Williams
Mar 10, 2021
No long-term care advocate is surprised by what was hiding behind Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s mask of self-congratulatory competence. Indeed, his reckless disregard for the lives of nursing home residents in...
Paying the price of political ransomware
By
Brendan Williams
Mar 20, 2024
Perspective is too often lacking when it comes to our healthcare system. Policymakers will, for example, generalize from every alleged transgression by a nursing home provider and paint the entire...
A beast of a month leads nursing homes closer to the brink
By
Brendan Williams
Apr 22, 2022
Providers can be forgiven for thinking that at this terribly perilous moment, those looking to administer the coup de grâce have been empowered.
Hospitals are heroic, while nursing homes are always to blame
By
Brendan Williams
Apr 29, 2020
Hospitals have always enjoyed “most favored nation” status in healthcare, and that’s even more true during the COVID-19 pandemic. But apparently you can’t have heroes without villains. While lauding...
Useless PPE befitting federal nursing home neglect
By
Brendan Williams
Jul 29, 2020
According to Paraprofessional Health Institute data, there were 581,000 nursing assistants working in nursing homes in 2018. Their median wage was just $13.38 an hour. Ninety-two percent were women,...
President Biden’s staffing mandate would crush nonprofit nursing homes too
By
Brendan Williams
Jan 08, 2024
Although President Biden, once the darling of the credit card industry and now reborn as an economic populist, has never said anything positive about nursing homes, he has inferred that nonprofit...
The truth behind long-term care insurance
By
Brendan Williams
Jul 06, 2018
For some, long-term care insurance has long been viewed, despite all evidence to the contrary, as a nostrum to fix what ails long-term care.