NPR and Propublica both had articles about Dr. Lars Aanning who has admitted to lying underoath for a colleague. This happens all the time. Doctors don’t squeal on doctors. It is similar to the thin blue line for police officers. Should Dr. Aanning be commended for telling the truth now? The South Dakota surgeon had been
ABC News had an interesting article about the decline in the use of alarms as a means of fall prevention. The change is part of a nationwide movement to phase out personal alarms and other long-used fall prevention measures in favor of more proactive, preventative care. Without alarms, facilities need staff to better learn residents’
The News-Gazette had a very sick and disturbing article on how Channing J. Butler, an employee of Bickford Senior Living facility Bickford Cottage, was caught and arrested for soliciting others to have sex with female residents so that he could videotape them. Butler allegedly wanted the men to perform both oral and vaginal sex on
As discussed before, the real drivers of healthcare costs are not lawsuits, which studies by Johns Hopkins Medicine found are less than 1% of healthcare costs. The big costs are a result of fraud. Kindred Healthcare, a large for profit chain of nursing homes, will pay $125 million to settle allegations that it billed Medicare for
The Boston Globe reported the pattern of problems with the care provided by Synergy Health Centers. State inspection reports of Synergy’s nursing homes routinely show striking increases in problems since the company arrived in Massachusetts. Synergy’s expansion in Massachusetts has been rapid — the chain has purchased 10 nursing homes since December 2012 — and with the
The New York Times had an interesting article about the emergence of nursing homes replacing hospitals in providing basic medical care. Certain procedures and treatments require hospital admission, of course. But “the push is to reduce unnecessary hospitalization for things that can be handled in skilled nursing facilities,” said David Siskind, the medical director at
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