If you like this post, please read my Senior Parent Hospitalization posts: Report #1: This Hospital Gets It, Report #2: Peace and Quiet, Report #3: Four Ways to Reduce Stress for Patient Families, Report #4: Observations from My Dad, Report #5: The Emergency Room Worked Fast, and Report #6: Learning About Cardiac Procedures and Surgeries. The last time I spent a … Continue reading
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Senior Parent Hospitalization, Report #1: This Hospital Gets It
If you like this post, please read my Senior Parent Hospitalization posts: Report #1: This Hospital Gets It, Report #2: Peace and Quiet, Report #3: Four Ways to Reduce Stress for Patient Families, Report #4: Observations from My Dad, Report #5: The Emergency Room Worked Fast, and Report #6: Learning About Cardiac Procedures and Surgeries. I am sitting in a beautiful … Continue reading
Read the Hot Spotters by Dr. Atul Gwande
Somehow I put aside the New Yorker Magazine with Dr. Gwande’s article, The Hot Spotters, and never got back to it. So I sat down the other day and read the entire piece — if you print it out it’s 18 pages, so it takes a while. However, the article is well worth the time … Continue reading
Aging Parents, Adult Children: Caregiving and Empathy
When you have senior parents who need increasing support, empathy is critical. You try hard, and not always with success, to understand what they are experiencing. That’s called empathy. The concept of empathy has received a bit of a bad rap the past year or two with politicians actually taking the time to deliver statements … Continue reading
Redesigned Medicare Caregiver Site: Eldercare Community Resource Locator
A Quick Review of Eldercare Resource Locator The Eldercare locater link at the bottom of the Medicare Caregiver home page connects to a page where users can search for a broad range of eldercare resources or for connections and contact information for local community organizations. Users can search by zip code or city or for information on a … Continue reading
Redesigned Medicare Caregiver Site: A Graphical Tour
To discover Medicare and caregiving resources, check out the redesigned caregiving website, debuting Tuesday, April 12, 2011. It’s user-friendly and graphically interesting with a focus on easy information access. At the same time updated site promotes learning, sharing, supporting, and collaborating. Adult children, even if they are not providing a huge amount of caregiving support, would … Continue reading
Medicare Projections: Congressional Budget Office
Read CBO: Seniors Would Pay Much More For Medicare Under Ryan Plan in the Kaiser Health News. A graph using Congressional Budget Office (CBO) data depicts the costs to a Medicare beneficiary (what a person will pay) in 2022 and 2030. In the article Congressman Ryan says, “Washington has been making empty promises to Americans from a … Continue reading
Will Concierge Medical Practices Cause Medicare Decline?
Read High-end Medical Option Prompts Medicare Worries, an article posted by the Associated Press today (April 2, 2011). The article, by health reporter Ricardo Alonzo-Zaldivar, examines the increasing number of practices that are moving toward concierge medicine (also called retainer-based physician practices). Concerns abound about how this might affect the access to care by Medicare beneficiaries. Although … Continue reading
Caregiving and Mobile Technology: We Need to Learn More
Mobile technology is moving into our lives — whether it’s the phone we carry, the newspaper we read, the heart monitor we must wear for a few days, the smart pass we use at tollbooths, or the gadget that helps to monitor a senior parent with balance issues but who lives alone. Increasingly, mobile gadgets … Continue reading
Aging Arthritis Patients Should Keep Moving
I’ve observed quite a few people, seniors and not quite seniors, who are diagnosed with arthritis and then gradually slow down and stop moving. They stop climbing stairs and taking walks. According to a recent study this may be precisely the wrong thing to do. In 2000 the Department of Health and Human Services came … Continue reading
Different People – Different Dementias
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published a March 14, 2011 article, The Many Faces of Dementia which describes different types of the brain diseases as well as the importance of accurately and carefully diagnosing the type of brain abnormality that is affecting each person. Collecting information for a diagnosis involves not only the physician and patient, … Continue reading
Senior Emergency Centers at Hospitals
If you have taken aging parents for a noisy, confusing, not to mention long, emergency visit, you will want to keep well-informed about hospitals that are developing facilities expressly tailored to seniors. Yesterday, March 14, 2011, The New York Times New Old Age Blog posted an article, Emergency Rooms Built With the Elderly in Mind. … Continue reading
Does Part D Stand for Deficit? Read Medicare and More Column
Many of us appear to want to as much as we can get without planning or paying for it. We hate taxes, but we want a lot done for us anyway. A distant relative says about Medicare, “I deserve every penny I get, I paid for it.” My answer, yes she deserves every penny she … Continue reading
Mayo Clinic Medical Edge Radio
This morning I discovered a terrific and educational weekly radio program, Medical Edge Radio Weekend, a Saturday morning broadcast from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. The program is easily accessible on the web. From a Twitter post I learned that the today’s (February 12, 2011) broadcast featured cardiologist, Dr. Rekha Mankad. For nearly an hour, Dr. … Continue reading
Communication is Critical in Aging Adult Health Care
A friend’s 85-year-old mother had surgery requiring two different types of cardiologists. Besides the primary care physician (PCP), her parent was seeing the two heart physicians and two additional specialists for other reasons. When my friend, on a visit to the primary care physician with her mom, asked a question about dizziness and the possibility that … Continue reading
Senior Gait Speed and Life Expectancy
Bob (not his real name) is an active man in his mid-90’s. Whenever we made early morning visits to his senior community, we found him up and walking before breakfast. If the day was especially cold, he made rounds of the various corridors, regularly changing floors and always waving a cheerful good-morning to residents emerging … Continue reading
Be Proactive With Atrial Fibrillation!
It’s been a year and a day or two since my husband’s mother died, and frequently we think about her stroke and its effect on the last 30 months of her life. To support the health of our other senior parents and to be sure we know enough to be advocates for our own health, … Continue reading
Medicare Taxes and Benefits Just Don’t Add Up
A January 3, 2011 Washington Post article, Analysis Illustrates Big Gap Between Medicare Taxes and Benefits, describes an Associated Press poll that found that most people believe they deserve all of their Medicare benefits with no cuts, no increased costs, and no additional Medicare taxes, even though most have paid in far less taxes over … Continue reading
Strokes Don’t Just Happen to Aging Parents
Many middle-aged adults listen to Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion commentaries on life, and a good number of us have been tuning into the radio program for 30 years or so. Few aspects of daily experience escape his humorous and sage observations — families, travel, children, politics, writing, arts — you name it, and not surprisingly, … Continue reading
Medicare: 2011 Updates and Innovations
If a senior parent in your family is on Medicare, or if a family member is an adult who will turn 65 in 2011, significant changes are coming in 2011 as a result of the healthcare overhaul. A total of 21 healthcare changes are supposed to be implemented, beginning January 1; however, a smaller number … Continue reading
As Our Parents Age So Do We 