Nursing Home Aduse is a serious crime. Most states have laws that include criminal penalties for different types of elder abuse. Often, nursing home abuse is not reported  because the individual homes do not take elderly abuse seriously. Residents are afraid they will be embarrassed, hurt or declared incapacitated if they tell.

Who to Report Abuse to

If you or someone you love has been the victim of nursing home abuse, contact legal counsel to find out what your rights are. If someone is in immediate, life-threatening danger, call 9-1-1 immediately.

If the danger is not immediate, but abuse is suspected, you must tell someone. Contact:

• A doctor

• A family member you trust

• Local adult protective services

• Long-term care ombudsman for the appropriate state

• Local police

How to Report Abuse

It is everyone’s personal responsibility to report any suspected case of elderly abuse to the authorities. When making a call to report nursing home or senior living abuse, you should be ready to give the elder’s name, address, contact information and details about your concerns.

Some questions you may need to answer include:

• Does the elderly person have any known medical problems?

• What kinds of family or other social support system does the elderly person have?

• Have you witnessed any incidents of hitting, yelling or other abusive behavior?
If you are reporting abuse but are not related to the victim, calling a nursing home abuse hotline is your smartest choice. Each state has organizations that monitor these hotlines and can offer help.

If you are making a formal complaint against a nursing home or specific staff member, you should find a sitter to monitor them in your absence or remove them from the nursing home right away.
 

An inquiry into acute care in New South Wales public hospitals is claiming elderly patients are being pressured into accepting nursing home beds even though they may not be suitable for the nursing home.

A social worker at Blacktown Hospital, Claudia Graham, has told the inquiry many elderly patients are discharged from hospital too quickly.

Ms Graham says families are often forced to place their loved ones in unsuitable aged care facilities because of pressure from the hospital to make beds available for other patients.

She says she often witnesses a rapid deterioration in elderly patients who have been told they will have to go into a nursing home.

Ms Graham wants to see a change of emphasis from patient flow to patient care.

She has told the inquiry more transitional care beds should be made available to allow time to find suitable nursing homes for patients.

The inquiry is taking evidence today at Sydney’s Westmead Hospital.

A jury Thursday awarded $1 million in punitive damages to the family of a 104-year-old woman who died after a short stay at Villa Valencia Nursing Home in Laguna Hills.

The judgment against the center’s owner, Virginia-based Sunrise Senior Living, comes two days after the same Orange County Superior Court panel rendered a separate $1 million verdict for negligence in the March 2005 death of Mary Kathleen Adams of Laguna Hills.

Sunrise Senior Living operates 440 senior homes in the U.S. and abroad – says it will appeal the decision.

The trial, which began in March, revolved around the physical decline of Adams, a retired teacher who admitted herself to the home after fracturing her leg.

Adams then developed pressure ulcers and was not given adequate treatment, such as daily skin checks, according to the lawsuit. She left the home after about two months, on Feb. 25, 2005, and died about two weeks later because of the ulcers, the lawsuit says.

Every year over 38 million Senior Citizen’s suffer drug complications, 180,000 of which are life-threatening, according to research by Dr. Jerry Gurwitz, chief of geriatric medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

The risk for drug errors is seven times greater in seniors than in people under age 65, according to Medco Health Solutions, a pharmacy benefits manager.

“When I was in training, my mentor taught me the maxim that any new symptom in an older person should be considered a drug side effect until proven otherwise,” Gurwitz said.

Only a doctor can tell you whether your older relative is suffering from medication side effects or from an actual disease.

Read the entire artcile at cnn.com are steps you can take to help your doctor sort out which is which.

More than 100 million Americans should be monitoring their blood pressure at home, according to three major health organizations that are issuing at home blood pressuremonitoring.Hypertension is a blood pressure reading greater than 140 over 90. Pre-hypertension is a reading higher than 120/80, the desired level, but just below 140/90.

Some of the specific recommendations include:

Patients should purchase a blood pressure monitor with cuffs that fit on the upper arm.Wrist monitors are not recommended.
Two or three readings should be taken at a time, one minute apart, while resting in a seated position. The arm should be supported, with the upper arm at heart level and feet on the floor.Readings should be taken at the same time every day, as recommended by a health-care provider.The target goal is a reading under 135/85, or less than 130/80 in high-risk individuals.The home monitoring recommendations open the door to a totally new way of controlling blood pressure, Oparil said.
Source: usnews.com

Medicaid is known as the government health-care program for the poor, but it pays for more than two-thirds of long-term nursing-home stays. That means many middle-income Americans with savings will need the program. Ultimately, medicaid will cover nursing-home care for nearly everyone who needs it but can’t afford to pay on their own.

All Medicaid beneficiaries fit into one of several qualifying categories  of the program - 65 years of age or older, blind or disabled, for example. You must also submit financials that take into account both your income , assets as well as those of your spouse if you are married. The final category is  the people eligible to receive Supplemental Security Income from the Social Security Administration.

Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group and health care- focused MBF Healthcare Partners have purchased  Omni Home Care LLC, a provider of skilled nursing and therapy-based services.

Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group and MBF, which will own equal stakes in Omni, used some senior debt financing from Wachovia Corp. (WB) and ORIX Finance Corp., which lends to health-care deals. Other terms weren’t disclosed.

Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group, which typically invests in companies owned or operated by ethnic minorities or serving markets with large minority populations, liked the opportunity because of Omni’s focus on markets such as Florida with a significant Hispanic population, said William Gonzalez, a vice president with the firm. In addition, the majority of the investment team of co- investor MBF Healthcare is of Hispanic descent

According to a recent study, having high cholesterol levels in your 40s may raise the chance of developing Alzheimer’s disease later in life.
The study involved 9,752 people in northern California found that those with high cholesterol levels between ages 40 and 45 were 50 percent more likely than those with low cholesterol levels to develop Alzheimer’s disease later in life.The findings were presented this past week at a meeting of the American Academy of Neurology in Chicago.

Read the entire article at reuters.com

Results from a recent large government experiment are lowering the hopes that two common painkillers can prevent Alzheimer’s disease or slow mental decline in older people.The study will be ending early due to not enough data to prove how the drugs act on thinking and memory.

The study showed that the arthritis drug Celebrex and the over-the-counter painkiller Aleve showed no benefit on thinking skills. Earlier results from the same research showed the two drugs didn’t prevent Alzheimer’s, at least in the short term.

The experiment was halted several years early in 2004 when heart risks turned up in a separate study on Celebrex. Researchers also had noticed more heart attacks and strokes in the people taking Aleve in the Alzheimer’s prevention study.

Government researchers claim that Senior Citizen’s have more money and are expected to live far longer than prior generations.They said the average net worth of older Americans( 65 years of age and older) has increased almost 80 percent over the past 20 years. They also found that those who reach the age of 65 are now expected to live an average of 19 more years, or seven years longer than people who had reached age 65 in the year 1900.

The findings are part a report released on Thursday called Older Americans 2008.The report forecasts that by 2030, the number of Americans over the age of 65 will nearly double to 71.5 million, or 20 percent of the U.S. population, up from 12 percent, or 37 million people, in 2006.

It also found that senior citizens in the United States are far better educated than prior generations. In 2007, 76 percent of those over 65 had high school diplomas, and at least 19 percent had a bachelor’s degree, up from 24 percent with high school diplomas in 1965 and just 5 percent with bachelor’s degrees.

Senior Citizens like many other groups, are getting fatter, the researchers said. In the 2005-2006 study period, 37 percent of women aged 65 to 74 were obese, and 24 percent of women age 75 and over were obese. This is up from the 1988-1994 study period, when 27 percent of women age 65 to 74 and 19 percent of women age 75 and over were obese.

Source: reuters.com