The Center for Medicare Advocacy published an article regarding the 3-day inpatient hospital requirement for Medicare Skilled Nursing facility coverage. The article explains the process and makes an appeal to congress asking that this rule should be repealed for multiple reasons including: Medical care has changed in the past 55 years. Traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage need to be aligned. …
Nearly 1.5 million Americans are being vaccinated every day against COVID-19. Allergic reactions have led some to question if they should get the vaccine, and scant data from clinical trials for the currently approved vaccines in vulnerable populations means we don’t fully know how those with certain conditions will react. In an interview on MedPage Today, Dr. Barbara Alexander, M.D., …
This morning, the American Health Care Association announced their new reform agenda, the Care for Our Seniors Act, in partnership with LeadingAge. Check out excerpts from their statement below, or click here for their full announcement. “The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated systemic issues impacting the nursing home sector, such as workforce shortages, aging physical plants, and underfunded government …
The CEO of Johnson & Johnson said Tuesday that people may need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 annually for the next several years; similar to seasonal flu shots. “Unfortunately, as the virus spreads, it can also mutate,” Alex Gorsky said in an interview on CNBS. “Every time it mutates, it’s almost like another click of the dial, so to speak, …
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), issued updated guidance on March 10th for nursing homes to safely expand visitation options during the COVID-19 pandemic public health emergency (PHE). This latest guidance comes as more than three million doses of vaccines have been administered within nursing homes, thanks …
A U.K. trial has been launched to see if giving people different COVID vaccines for their first and second doses works as well as the current approach of using the same type of vaccine twice. The idea is to provide more flexibility with vaccine rollout and help deal with any potential disruption to supplies. Scientists say that mixing the vaccines …
March 4, 2021 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration alerted consumers, health care providers, and other users of thermal imaging systems intended to measure human body temperature—also known as telethermographic systems, infrared thermographs, thermal cameras, and “fever cameras”—that improper use of the systems may provide inaccurate temperature readings due to a variety of factors. Additionally, the FDA issued several Warning …
While most Alzheimer’s detection and prevention research focuses on the aggregation of tau tangles and amyloid-beta proteins in the brain, some novel approaches are finding success elsewhere. A research team led by Eugenia Trushina, recently received the Alzheimer’s Drug Discover Foundation-Harrington Scholar Award to fund their research into mitochondrial restoration, a novel approach with surprising results in preventing Alzheimer’s decline. …
In an article published on February 11, 2021, in Health Affairs, the authors stated that prior to the pandemic, persistent problems with nursing home care had been documented for years, often because of too few and inadequately trained frontline staff. The harm to frail older adults can be quite severe; abuse and sexual assault, infections, overuse of psychotropic medications, pressure …
Variants of the COVID-19 virus are very much in the news and we are seeing is a slow but steady evolution of the coronavirus. There are now four major variants of the virus that are of concern and in fact, experts refer to them as “variants of concern”. The first recognized variant was the U.K. variant, identified in the southern …
