“Federal Nursing Home Commission Calls on CMS to Adopt 27 Recommendations, ‘Reduce Suffering’,” by Alex Spanko, Skilled Nursing News Quote: “The solutions target a list of seven overarching problems or improvement areas that the group identified in its analysis: Ongoing supply and affordability dilemmas related to testing, screening, and personal protective equipment (PPE) Tension between rigorous infection control measures and quality of life issues that exist in cohorting and visitation policies A call for transparent and accessible communications with residents, their representatives and loved ones, and the public Urgent need to train, support, protect, and respect direct-care providers Outdated infrastructure
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“Lapse In Long-Term Care Insurance Doesn’t Necessarily Ruin Coverage,” by Diane Omdahl, Forbes Quote: “In a previous post, I shared my father Rusty’s experience with long-term care (LTC) insurance. He purchased a policy when he was almost 65 years old. Ten years later, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Sometime around age 85, he started analyzing how much he was paying for all his coverage – Medicare, a retiree plan, and LTC policy – and determined that he was over-insured. He didn’t need the LTC policy, he thought, because Medicare and his retiree coverage would take care of him, a common fallacy. So,
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“A win for long-term care: Providers applaud withdrawal of MFAR proposal,” by Danielle Brown, McKnight’s LTC News Quote: “Providers cheered federal health officials’ decision to withdraw a proposal they warned could cut up to $50 billion nationwide from the Medicaid program annually. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced Monday that it’s rescinding the proposed Medicaid Fiscal Accountability Rule (MFAR). CMS Administrator Seema Verma in a tweet said the agency ‘listened closely to concerns that have been raised by our state and provider partners about potential unintended consequences of the proposed rule, which require further study. Therefore, CMS is withdrawing the rule
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“Missed Vaccines, Skipped Colonoscopies: Preventive Care Plummets,” by Sarah Kliff, New York Times Quote: “When the coronavirus pandemic hit, Americans vastly scaled back their preventive health care, and there is little sign that this deferred care will be made up. Vaccinations dropped by nearly 60 percent in April, and almost no one was getting a colonoscopy, according to new data from the nonprofit Health Care Cost Institute. … Americans continued seeking care they couldn’t avoid — hospital admissions for childbirth, for example, held steady — but skipped care they could put off. More invasive preventive procedures, such as mammograms and
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“Ken Dychtwald: 75% of Households Could Face a Big Retirement Shock,” by Jane Wollman Rusoff, ThinkAdvisor Quote: “Given the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, there’s a chance that in retirement, only 25% of all U.S. working households will be able to maintain their current standard of living unless they work longer, move to lower-cost housing and reduce many other expenditures, argues Ken Dychtwald, co-founder and CEO of Age Wave, in an interview with ThinkAdvisor. … A very small percentage of the American population has an employer paying for a pension, and savings rates have been scary low. We did a
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