Senior living’s caregiving sectors — nursing homes, assisted living and home care — share problems and needs in varying degrees. But what they get from long-term care (LTC) research is seldom what...
The Medicaid LTC snafu
By
Stephen A. Moses
Apr 15, 2024
Long-term care operators were sold a pig in a poke. When Medicaid started paying for nursing home care after 1965, it looked like a pretty good deal. The new revenue stream vastly expanded severely limited...
Unraveling the impact: PDPM Medicaid case-mix index and potential Five-Star Rating challenges
By
Steven Littlehale
Mar 01, 2024
The landscape of Medicaid reimbursement for nursing homes is undergoing significant changes. Presently, eight states have adopted the PDPM case-mix index (CMI) model, and an additional 31 states are set...
How government prevaricates about long-term care
By
Stephen A. Moses
Feb 23, 2024
Most federal officials and the analysts who advise them are progressives. They prefer public over private sector solutions for most social problems. Sometimes progressives bend the truth to tip public...
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...
Fasten your seatbelts: It MIGHT be a bumpy ride
By
Steven Littlehale
Oct 13, 2023
It’s been a flurry of activity leading up to the implementation of the “new MDS.” For months our industry has been doing what we do best — rising to the occasion. Countless MDS training sessions,...
Facts don’t support attacking nursing home care
By
Brendan Williams
Jul 26, 2023
We can probably assume no House Select Subcommittee will stage a showy hearing to examine the recent finding that the excess mortality rate was better during the COVID-19 pandemic for those with dementia...
States answering a second long-term care bell
By
James M. Berklan
May 05, 2023
For a variety of reasons, veterans homes just don’t typically seem to warm the hearts of those not directly involved. But not this week.
If only nursing homes were banks
By
Brendan Williams
Mar 17, 2023
I went to high school in Iowa, where 19 nursing homes closed in 2022 alone. Surely, you might think, this has prompted a federal response.It isn’t. Instead, the federal government has chosen to bail...
Can’t buy much on Grandma’s allowance
By
Kimberly Marselas
Mar 15, 2023
Knowing the incredibly tight dollar amounts that institutionalized Medicaid beneficiaries live by, I have a new perspective on my grandma’s desire to make little luxuries last.