Last week the world took note with appropriate solemnity a terrible historic moment: The first military use of nuclear weapons, with explosions 75 years ago of bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The resulting carnage — which the United States said was needed to end the horrors of World War II, especially….
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The big Alzheimer’s puzzle: Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV. Blood, too?
It isn’t just the testing for the novel coronavirus that has already anxious Americans upset these days. Controversies also are swirling around existing and developing ways for experts to screen older patients for cognitive decline, namely dementia and its most familiar form, Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s disease, which accounts for 60%-80% of dementia cases, is the….
Continue ReadingVA hospital care under fire again after aide pleads to killing seven patients in West Virginia
She was a 46-year-old Army veteran hired by the Louis A. Johnson Medical Center in 2015 with no certification or license to care for patients. Reta Mays worked in the middle of the night, tending to elderly, onetime service personnel, sitting bedside and monitoring their vitals, including their blood sugar levels. Mays went room to….
Continue Reading57,000 reasons why U.S. needs to fire the top U.S. nursing home watchdog
With the calendar pages flying off to the fall presidential elections, why isn’t today an excellent time for President Trump to thank Seema Verma for her service and send her packing as head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in the Department of Health and Human Services? Two news organizations — Vox….
Continue ReadingThe doctor is in. Still. For now. But science denial and the pandemic rage on …
To paraphrase the White House press secretary, science denialism is not getting in the way of the rampaging Covid-19 pandemic. Eighteen states have hit “red zone” status where infections, hospitalizations, and deaths have soared to such dire levels (more than 100 new cases per 100,000 people per week) that a study held in private by….
Continue ReadingAged, ill, and injured get shabby treatment at ‘care’ facilities across country
To paraphrase the late, great writer and activist Maya Angelou, nursing homes and other long-term care facilities are showing the public in the middle of this pandemic just truly what they are. It is hard to believe, still, the shabby way they are treating the aged, sick, and injured. Just consider this sampling of recent….
Continue ReadingThey’re called ‘nursing’ homes. But what medical care can they really offer?
What’s in a name? The Covid-19 pandemic should force a major change in the big misnomer of long-term care institutions: Let’s stop labeling them with the term nursing — as if they provide significant medical services to the elderly, sick, and injured. Instead, the coronavirus may lead the public to bust the myth put forward….
Continue ReadingAs nursing home toll rises, many U.S. and state responses fall to new lows
Federal and state officials almost seem as if they are competing with each other to race to new lows in their wrong-headed failure to protect elderly, sick, and injured Americans who require institutional care and whose health and lives are being savaged by the novel coronavirus. An estimated 1.5 million Americans live in long-term institutions,….
Continue ReadingNews gets worse on Covid-19’s grim toll in facilities caring for the elderly
The news about the institutional care of vulnerable seniors during the Covid-19 pandemic just keeps getting worse in too many unacceptable ways. Just consider: The coronavirus has hit more than 2,100 nursing homes, killing more than 2,300 people, the Wall Street Journal and NBC News both have reported, based on the news organizations’ separate outreach….
Continue ReadingRethinking end-of-life plans and nursing home care for ourselves and loved ones
The Covid-19 pandemic is forcing many Americans to think and act on tough issues they otherwise might wish to avoid, and they’re getting thoughtful reminders on ways they may want to proceed with advanced or end-of-life medical planning and decisions on whether to keep elderly loved ones in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities….
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