Federal officials recently warned that ''nightmare bacteria'' are becoming increasingly resistant to even the strongest antibiotics, and represent a growing threat to hospitals and nursing homes nationwide, according to this article from The Washington Post. At a news conference, Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and ...

In recent years, more nursing homes have been cited for deficiencies in handwashing, according to a study from The Journal of Applied Gerontology. In fact, inspectors found handwashing deficiencies in fewer than 7.4 percent of nursing homes from 2000 to 2002, but by 2009 found them in close to 12 percent. Some states were getting better, such as ...

ADVANCE for LTC Management regularly features articles on infection control. Many of those articles have mentioned C. difficile infections in the past. And C. diff, as it's known in the infection control vernacular, is in the news yet again: In fact, the CDC has issued a report that C. diff infections are at record-high rates in health care ...

One-fifth of Medicare nursing home patients with advanced Alzheimer's or other dementias were sent to hospitals or other nursing homes for questionable reasons in their final months, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers from Harvard University and Dartmouth Medical School studied almost 475,000 ...

After this year's government audit on the use of antipsychotics to control dementia behavior in nursing home patients, it looks like at least some nursing homes are taking positive action, according to an Associated Press article on MSNBC.com. Since antipsychotics can inhibit seniors' ability to effectively communicate, socialize or participate ...

The American Geriatrics Society's newest clinical tool, the AGS Guide to the Management of Psychotic Disorders and Neuropsychiatric Symptoms of Dementia in Older Adults, is now available on the AGS Web site, according to an AGS news release.  The guide gives health care professionals an overview of the risk factors, evaluation and ...

It seems that older adults are overtreated and overtested, according to a recent post on Paula Span's New Old Age blog on The New York Times Web site. Span discusses how nearly 20 percent of elderly women with advanced dementia are subjected to mammograms. She also highlights how older diabetics are urged to maintain very low blood sugar levels ...

An OIG audit found that almost one in seven elderly nursing home residents, nearly all of them with dementia, are given powerful atypical antipsychotic drugs even though the medicines increase the risks of death and are not approved for such treatments, according to a New York Times article. More than half of the antipsychotics paid for by the ...

It seems we hear about a new ''superbug'' in the media on an ongoing basis. So I wasn't surprised to see this video on World News with Diane Sawyer last week. The video profiles a dangerous new superbug named carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae, or CRKP for short, that's showing up in increasing numbers in hospitals and nursing homes. ...

A study at two nursing homes suggests doctors commonly prescribe unnecessary antibiotics to elderly people with suspected urinary tract infections, according to this Reuters Health article on MSNBC.com. In fact, two out of every five residents with urinary issues received inappropriate drugs, which increased their chances of developing a ...