Category: Nursing Homes

Palliative Care Consults in Nursing Homes Reduce Hospitalizations

Palliative Care for Seniors
Palliative Care can help seniors who would otherwise be depressed

Palliative care consults in nursing homes lead to fewer hospitalizations and less intensive treatment.

A study in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society studied nursing home residents who died from 2006 to 2010 and found that hospitalization rates were the lowest when the initial palliative care consultation happened the furthest from death.

“These findings have never been shown in nursing homes,” author Susan Miller, PhD, MBA, a Brown University gerontologist and School of Public Health professor, said in a statement. “It’s important that we document this because essentially when people are in the nursing home for a long stay, that’s their final residence. These are people in need of supportive care and expertise in palliative care.”

The study found that for residents with initial consultations 8 to 30 days before death had a hospitalization rate in the last 7 days of life of 11.1% compared with a rate of 6.9% for patients with initial consultations 61 to 180 days before death.

Dr. Miller wasn’t surprised at the differences, but was surprised at how large the differences were.

Potentially burdensome transition rates were about 50% lower for residents with consults at 61 to 180 days before death compared with residents without consults. Transitions between settings can be physically and emotionally stressful for elderly, frail patients, and there is the risk of new medication side effects, exposure to resistant bacteria, and complications from procedures.

Palliative care consults are not used more frequently because unlike hospice care, palliative care consults are not a distinct benefit under Medicare. The payment for providers is usually not much.

Hospice care is used when the patient is likely to die within 6 months and many elderly people in nursing homes have serious illnesses that aren’t necessarily terminal. As a result, the hospice benefit may not be an option, but consults to access palliative care could benefit them.

“There are a lot of things that we need to consider,” Dr. Miller said. “If we had payment for this and there were more people providing it there would be greater access and maybe different people using it.”

Visiting the Elderly – A Habit That Can Keep Them Young

Your beloved aunt is in a nursing home or your grandmother with whom you used to stay all the time or even the grandpa whom you visit; we often feel sympathetic towards our elders who are living in a nursing home but that is the only thing we do for them; thinking of them occasionally. How come we never consider visiting them?

Most of us have a perception of nursing homes being a depressing place or that visiting our elders is not just cool enough. We are hugely mistaken on both accounts. First-off, the nursing homes of today not only provide the most excellent care to their elders, but also have many activities and other things planned that keep the elders occupied. Moreover, the elders get to meet people like them and of their own age. The only thing lacking from their life is a visit from their loved ones.

There are many good reasons for you to visit your beloved elder. Here are some of them:

Keeping A Check On Their Health

They are your own flesh and blood and it is your responsibility to keep a check on their health. Visiting them once a week is good and visiting them every other day is even better. You’d know how they are doing, how they are being taken care of and would result in you being kept in the loop about their well-being. The elder person too feels secure and safe in the knowledge that someone is looking after them.

Mending Severed Ties

There is always someone in the family who we never liked much or we never had a good relation with. However, that doesn’t mean that we put them out of our lives forever. It’s a harsh reality but at any point of time, those elders could be taking their last breaths. You don’t want them to die without saying sorry to them or without actually getting on good terms with them. Visiting elders you never liked will not only be good for your conscience, but will also give you a sense of closure. You will be surprised to know how many people actually become good friends only after reaching a very old age. So, don’t put your non-favorite people off your visiting list.

Helping them Feel Loved

Blood relations can never be replaced by anyone or anything else in life and that is why most elders become very lonely, despite being surrounded by many others. Visits from you can change their life. They begin to show positive behavior, smile more and they wait for your visits every day. Most elders who are left by their family get very quiet and their health deteriorates quicker than the others. Visiting family and friends keep them young, healthy and happy. So, even when their time is up, they leave the world with a smile on their face. Imagine you being the reason for that smile!

If you have any elder in a nursing home right now, then make it a point to visit them as regularly as possible. They don’t need much and just your presence is enough to add life to their numbered days.

Five Reasons to Volunteer in a Nursing Home

Are you at that phase of your life where you have nothing but time on your hands? If so, then you can only belong to one of the two kinds; you either want to spend all your time lounging around the house or you want to experience something new and different that you haven’t had a chance of doing before. Needless to say, the latter is always a good idea. So, while you search long and hard about some life-shattering and eye-opening experience, let us advise you to look a little closer and maybe think about the nearest nursing home in your vicinity.

There are many good reasons to spend your free time with the elderly but most importantly, it can also be as life-changing as you want it to be. It will just happen a lot subtly. Still not convinced? Allow us to do the honors:

Become a Better Person:

Could there be a better goal in life than that of becoming a good person? No, there isn’t. Fortunately, it is a goal that doesn’t require money or fame. Doing small things for others can make you a hero; whether it is pushing someone’s wheelchair, reading stories to someone or just listening to what they have to say. Little acts of kindness can become a big sea of good deeds.

Elders Have a Lot To Tell:

If you are ever feeling down or are caught in some dilemma of life, then who do you think would be better company? Your best friend who is almost as confused as you are or the elders who have already been through this thing in which you are drowning in? Spending some meaningful time with them can not only help them stay young but will also help you become wiser.

The Fear of Death Will Recede:

Old age and death is something that we think about as little as we can. However, not planning or not thinking won’t change the fact that one day, we’ll all grow old and we’ll all die, not exactly in that order. Spending more time with the elderly will help you appreciate old age too and after remaining in the company of brave old souls, you will realize that death isn’t that scary anymore. Most people are absolutely ready when their time comes.

You’ll feel Appreciated:

A large number of us rarely feel appreciated. That’s just how the world is. Parents are always asking us to be one thing or the other, siblings are usually just annoyed by our presence and it’s impossible to even think that our existence is appreciated by anyone, except a select few. But, if you pay attention to the faces of the elderly people you meet every day, you’ll notice how they smile as soon as they see you, how they have been waiting for you all day long and how they are genuinely smiles to have you with them. The old people sure know how to make us feel appreciated.

You Get to Learn:

By watching nurses roam around and taking care of the old, you are certain to learn a few things. If not a proper profession, then at least you’ll know how to take care of old people much better than most other people.
We usually believe that nursing homes need volunteers like us. However, what we don’t realize is how much we need to have them around us.

Nursing Home Information Being Added To Yelp

Consumers will now be able to look up government information on healthcare facilities thanks to the data ProPublica has compiled data on 15,000 nursing homes, 4,600 hospitals, and 6,300 dialysis clinics using information from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, according to Washington Post.

Pages for nursing homes contain information about fines paid to the government and whether inspections have shown “serious deficiencies” in the last 3 years. The data is color-coded for ease of use.

“Now the millions of consumers who use Yelp to find and evaluate everything from restaurants to retail will have even more information at their fingertips when they are in the midst of the most critical life decisions, like which hospital to choose for a sick child or which nursing home will provide the best care for aging parents,” Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelmen wrote in a blog post.

Healthcare and medical businesses have already been available on Yelp for consumers to review using the star-rating system, but now the additional information from ProPublica will appear on the page as well. According to Yelp, the health category makes up 6% of reviewed businesses.

Most of the information being made available on Yelp is already available on Medicare’s Hospital Compare site, which can be difficult to sift through.

“While it is helpful, having general information doesn’t really add as much value as doctor-specific feedback that pretty much every hospital in the country is capturing,” Mr. Stoppelmen wrote. “Healthcare is very personal — often it is about a one-on-one relationship, so the information that consumers crave the most is information about a particular doctor.”