Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
My paper with co-authors Shanshan Wang and Kirk Kirr just came out in the Journal of Long-Term Care titled Wound-Specific Oral Nutritional Supplementation Can Reduce the Economic Burden of Pressure Injuries for Nursing Homes: Results from an Economic Model. The abstract is below. Background To measure the cost savings and staff time savings of wound-specific…
One idea is to provide additional funding for both formal and informal caregiving services. For instance, one could subsidize nursing homes or home health agencies on the formal side; for informal caregiving, one could give stipends to individuals to care for their elderly parents. The question is, does this implementation actually work? This is the…
Trends in long-term care spending and use has been rising over time. The graphs below, from Nadash et al. (2012) demonstrate this trend between 2000 and 2008. Annual Expenditures Long-Term Care Expenditures Annual Enrollment in Long-Term Care Programs Today, I review the long-term care systems in five European countries: Austria, England, France, Germany, and…
Aging adults with additional functional need typically are either cared for in one of two settings: i) the home, or ii) a nursing home. Singapore’s policy greatly favors the former. In contrast with the United Kingdom and the United States, Singapore has sought to minimize LTC costs by adopting an LTC policy that promotes “the…
There have been a number of recent efforts to finance long-term care for the elderly. The health reform law, as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, created a national, voluntary insurance program for purchasing community living services and supports known as the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program (CLASS…
In 2011, 13 percent of Americans were over 65 years old. In the coming years, this number will only increase. Unsurprisingly, the demand for long-term care will also increase. Currently, spending on long-term care in Medicaid only was over $50 billion in 2009. One option for increasing the affordability of the long-term care market is…
The increased use of long-term care (LTC) services has been one of the forces increasing health care cost and utilization. Currently, 10.3 million Americans use LTC services. The Kaiser Family Foundation provides a summary of LTC Services and Supports in the U.S. Who uses LTC? One can divide LTC services into those who receive care…
For Labor Day, I will profile a group of workers who are underappreciated: long-term care workers. These posts are typically filled by certified nurse’s aids (CNAs). Despite the importance of their job, their remuneration is far from generous. In The Politics of Medicaid, Laura Katz Olson reports that CNA hourly wages were only $10.61 in…
Almost 7 out of every 10 of individuals living to age 65 will require some long-term care (LTC) assistance. Of these, over one-third will spend some time in a nursing home. In general, however, the elderly strongly prefer home based LTC if possible. “Mattimore and colleagues (1997) found that 30% of elderly survey respondents would…
In Virginia, there are over one million people age 60 and older and over 90,000 Virginians age 85 and older. These figures will only grow in the upcoming decades. Thus will put increasing strain on public programs and will require service providers to reorient medical care toward providing continued, high-quality long term care services. Long…