Those who work in long-term care are all too familiar with death. Death is very much a part of life, but those who work in the long-term care environment become quite acquainted with the death and dying process as part of an endemic feature of this type of environment. It is not a pleasant aspect of life, but it is a very real feature of ...

The following is a guest blog from Kevin R. McMahon: Multi facility nursing home organizations have a fairly standard arrangement that centralizes the operating authority over individual nursing facilities in a regional office. The regional office through operational directors oversees the operation of individual facilities. Facility ...

The nursing home, being predominately a medical environment, relies overwhelming on pharmacology for addressing issues of pain management. However, as I have mentioned in previous articles, pain is more than just a biological issue. The subjective nature of the pain response, and the psychology of the individual, too often fails to be ...

A new study from PHI, a national non-profit organization working to strengthen the health care services workforce, reveals that less than one-fifth of Massachusetts direct-care workers (nursing home assistants, home health care aides and personal care attendants) are enrolled in employer-sponsored health insurance plans. The primarily reason ...

Two new studies from The New England Journal of Medicine indicate that nursing home residents may be receiving futile care measures at the end of their lives. In one study, doctors examined health records of 3,702 nursing-home residents across the nation who started dialysis between 1998 and 2000. While the average age was 73, many had other ...

With the H1N1 virus lurking in our office (so far, one confirmed case), experts agree that aside from vaccination, the best defense is thorough handwashing. Check out this video from the Washington Post that shows proper handwashing technique. We hear these messages all the time, but truthfully, we could all probably do a better job ...

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, ...

Reliable information on the quality of nursing homes is hard to come by these days, according to an article in the Los Angeles Times. Currently, a Web site called Nursing Home Compare, which was created by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in 1998, provides information on nursing homes, from characteristics of residents to ...

A recent report at HealthReform.gov outlines exactly how health insurance reform, if passed, would strengthen health care for seniors and long-term care residents. ''America's Seniors and Health Insurance Reform: Protecting Coverage and Strengthening Medicare'' outlines, step by step, why the current health care system is ultimately unsustainable ...

The debate about the effectiveness of the CMS Nursing Home Compare Web site--with its five-star rating system--rages on, according to an article that was posted on The Washington Post online. Industry experts suggest that the rating system doesn't accurately portray the care given in nursing homes. To address these contentions, CMS is opening a ...