Skilled nursing facilities face enforcement challenges in COVID-19 environment
By
Jon Ferry
Aug 12, 2020
Skilled nursing facilities have faced unprecedented challenges since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. Individuals with many high-risk characteristics are the typical patients of these facilities....
Moving nursing homes forward: The future is now
By
Michael Wasserman
Oct 26, 2020
On March 11, I wrote about the COVID-19 storm rapidly approaching our nursing homes, and particularly the risk of nursing home staff transmitting the virus to residents. On March 15, I pointed out the...
What 2021 has in store on the legal front
By
Neville M. Bilimoria
Jan 20, 2021
Everyone has been celebrating that 2020 is over, and who can blame them? Yet, I can’t help think the legal issues facing long term care in 2020 won’t necessarily go away in 2021. Some of the lingering...
Honoring our fallen
By
Sara Bender
May 04, 2022
“What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we love deeply becomes part of us.” — Helen Keller. These past two years of the pandemic have presented clinical challenges...
Coronavirus sheds light on nursing home underfunding
By
Brendan Williams
Mar 09, 2020
Why should it take the COVID-19 outbreak for policymakers to pay attention to nursing homes? Last year in the state of Washington, when Medicaid underfunding forced the closure of Keiro Northwest — a...
This too shall pass! PALTC is united
By
Arif Nazir, MD, CMD
Mar 30, 2020
When a crisis hits, besides shedding light on the system gaps, it also highlights the strengths of a community. The stresses of the novel coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) have clearly highlighted the many...
Love in the time of … COVID-19
By
Jean Wendland Porter
Apr 08, 2020
To borrow from Gabriel Garcia Marquez, writer of Love in the Time of Cholera: “He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers...
Focus on life safety during the management of COVID-19
By
Stan Szpytek
Mar 24, 2020
Note: This story was updated on May 12 to reflect new regulatory changes. As skilled nursing facilities around the nation rise to the challenges of managing this current infectious disease outbreak, providers...
‘Notes from Underground,’ with apologies to Dostoevsky
By
Jean Wendland Porter
Dec 11, 2020
This is a throwback to college reading. It’s been a while for some of us, so bear with me for a minute. In 1864’s Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s narrator believes life in Utopia...
Setting minds and hearts at ease: a clinician’s guide to end-of-life-care conversations
By
Joseph Shega, M.D.
May 18, 2020
Having honest conversations with long-term care residents about their end-of-life wishes should always be a priority for primary care physicians, specialists and facility clinicians. The COVID-19 pandemic...