University of Missouri researchers are using a $1 million federal grant to help nursing home staffers transition from fax machines and voicemail to texting.
Kimberly Powell, an assistant professor in the MU School of nursing and the principal investigator for the research project, said an estimated $2.6 billion per year is spent on transferring nursing home residents to hospitals, and 60% of transfers are avoidable. Powell and her team are examining how texting can reduce delays in making care decisions, allow residents to be safely cared for in the nursing home, and reduce costly and sometimes traumatic transfers to hospitals.
The US Supreme Court declined Monday to hear a dispute over whether HHS can demand that long-term care facilities fully explain arbitration agreements to residents if they want to continue getting paid by Medicare and Medicaid. At issue was a decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit that upheld a US Health and Human Services Department rule placing a new condition on providers' participation in several health care programs.
Lobbyists and some members of Congress are urging the Biden administration to abandon proposed cuts to home health service Medicare payment rates, arguing the cuts could have a lasting impact on the industry. A proposed rule, which the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services releases annually to set rates for home health services, calls for a 7.96 percent permanent cut to payments starting next year. The cuts are part of the agency’s attempt to implement a new payment system for home health care that Congress passed in 2018.
Critics of Medicaid’s long-term services and supports (LTSS) program often complain that it is so poorly designed that lavishes benefits on wealthy retirees and wastes billions of dollars in taxpayer money. Some people do abuse the system. And they should be stopped. But the real problem with Medicaid LTSS is that in many states its benefits are so paltry that frail older adults receive poor care.
Assemblywoman Marianne Buttenschon, D-119, Marcy, has contacted Gov. Kathy Hochul regarding concerns about funds intended to pay for the home care minimum wage increase, which was slated to take effect today. "The $2 per hour minimum wage increase for home healthcare workers is not being distributed as it should," Buttenschon said in a statement. "Home care agencies and providers are waiting for funding to cover the increase as these additional costs were not included in their budgets."
Doctors are seeing more and more elderly people end up in the emergency room due to neglect, according to a survey by the AD. Clinical geriatricians believe this issue will only intensify as waitlists for elderly care and staff shortages both increase. Often, elderly people will come to the hospital with diseases left untreated for too long, malnourishment or advanced dementia, according to the AD. The reason is a shortage of long-term, nursing home care options for elderly people who are no longer able to live on their own.