Here in Pennsylvania, the ADVANCE staff is experiencing--for the third time this winter--a snow day. Huge flakes are falling, the roads are slick, and most of us are working from home. We have the option of settling in with a laptop, a notebook and a cup of coffee to take care of a day's work, without having to risk traveling in this weather. But ...

 The recruitment period of the Phase 2 Advancing Excellence in America's Nursing Homes Campaign ended at midnight January 31, 2010. The Campaign signed up. 5,860 nursing homes, including 1,132 new participants and 4,728 re-enrollees (now charter members of the Campaign), are now members of the Phase 2 Campaign, reports Carol Benner, ScM. ...

A study published in The New England Journal of Medicine questions whether dialysis is the best treatment for nursing home patients. As reported by USA Today, more than half of older nursing home residents die within a year of starting dialysis and ''nearly another third experience a significant decline in their ability to perform simple tasks, ...

  A news item about a mouse-on-resident attack in an Australian nursing home is hitting the U.S. media. Tales of mice chewing off residents' ears are, we can only hope, extremely rare, but certainly stir up a lot of attention and fear. Do you think the U.S. long-term care community should respond to this news report on a national level? ...

Recently a nursing home administrator asked me for some advice on how to change the culture of bathing in his facility. I asked him to describe his facility's current practice and what areas he felt were in need of change. He stated that the bathrooms in his facility (the location of the showers and the tub) were very plain and felt ...

Fall-induced traumatic brain injuries caused almost 8,000 deaths and 56,000 hospitalizations in 2005 among Americans 65 and older, reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the June issue of the Journal of Safety Research. In 2005, TBIs were responsible for 50 percent of unintentional fall deaths and 8 percent of nonfatal ...

Acting under his authority in the Public Health Service Act, HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt today declared a public health emergency in the flood-stricken states of Iowa and Indiana. The action gives CMS Medicare beneficiaries and their health care providers greater flexibility in meeting emergency health needs, according to an HHS news ...

Long-term care facilities are respected for their role in caring for seniors when they (and their families) are no longer able to provide for themselves at home. Some facilities across the country are providing another refuge for seniors who have been abused. Reports of elder abuse have reached 472,813 in 2000, the latest number available, ...

A recent report shows that the use of physical restraints in nursing homes has drastically declined in recent years as the federal government, states and the long-term care industry has placed greater emphasis on eliminating them.   How do you feel about this issue? Many people think restraints are inhumane, and can cause entrapment. On ...

Norovirus, often called the ''stomach flu,'' often shows its face this time of year. Most people realize it's highly contagious but, for the first time, U.S. health officials report it can be spread from contact on computer keyboards and computer mice. With several people sharing computers in long-term care facilities, and the push towards ...