Brushing away the risk: The crucial role of daily toothbrushing in preventing hospital-acquired pneumonia
By
Renee Kinder
Jan 18, 2024
A phenomenon that skilled nursing teams have long appreciated was recently highlighted in a recent article published in JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers Ehrenzeller and Klompas shed light on a critical...
The red bird: A story of connection and meaning
By
Martie Moore
Dec 15, 2023
My encounters with the red bird had been limited until a week after my mother died. I was sitting on the couch, consumed with grief when it first arrived. The red bird flew to the transom and peered...
Revamping CMS survey data integration amid regulatory lag in nursing home oversight
By
Steven Littlehale
Dec 08, 2023
The report titled “Uninspected and Neglected” by the majority staff of the US Senate Special Committee on Aging brings attention to a pressing issue: the severe understaffing of inspection agencies...
Restart rehabilitation
By
Jean Wendland Porter
Dec 06, 2023
I’ve been a physical therapist for a very long time, and as I prepare to renew my license for the four millionth time, I reflect on how my profession has changed. All of our professions have changed...
Better together
By
Gary Tetz
Nov 30, 2023
An hour or so before the siren in our long-term care factory blasted the official start of the work day, and feeling a heightened level of job-related stress, I strolled into a colleague’s office uninvited...
The MDS on Christmas vacation: ‘It’s a beaut Clark, it’s a beaut!’
By
Joel VanEaton
Nov 28, 2023
I love this time of year. Christmas is on its way. I especially love the holiday movie classics, “A Christmas Story,” “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” “Miracle on 34th Street,” “White Christmas,”...
Doctoral research doesn’t support the need for CMS proposed staffing mandates
By
Melissa Reed
Nov 15, 2023
Quality of care in long-term care settings has been perceived as an ongoing concern that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) aims to solve with its proposed staffing mandate. The proposed...
Data and empathy: The unseen defenders of nursing homes
By
Steven Littlehale
Nov 10, 2023
Back in September, I shared my insights in McKnight’s Long-Term Care News about the importance of being your own data defender. In that blog, I expressed a viewpoint that I believe strongly in: Every...
The federal Medicaid bait and switch
By
Stephen A. Moses
Nov 06, 2023
It was supposed to work like this. When people need long-term care, they pay privately until they’re impoverished. Then and only then Medicaid helps. To avoid that outcome, people were urged to save...
Continuity and quality of care should matter more than enriching staffing agencies
By
Brendan Williams
Oct 30, 2023
My association administers a long-term care foundation that has given over $1 million in scholarships to workers in New Hampshire long-term care facilities looking to pursue their dreams. Put another...