The nation’s rising suicide crisis torments seniors, too, with just under one out of five such deaths in 2017 occurring with individuals 65 and older. Men 65-plus, experts say, face the highest suicide risk, while seniors 85 and older, men and women, rank No. 2 in groups most likely to die by taking their own….
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Will GOP attack on Obamacare foil good plans to better kidney disease care?
More than 37 million Americans who suffer from chronic kidney disease soon may see big changes in the way their disabling condition gets treated, potentially also reducing the $100 billion that the federal Medicare program pays for care of the body’s crucial blood cleaning organs. President Trump issued an executive order calling on the federal….
Continue ReadingAs GOP keeps slashing at health coverage, big strains of caregiving ignored
Americans have real reason to fear a health care catastrophe: If loved ones suffer major injury or illness, who will feed, bathe, and care for them 24/7 after they get out of the hospital and recuperate at home? Who will take time off from work to set up and take them to unending and long….
Continue ReadingFor frail seniors, program offers choices and supports to keep them home
With the nation fast graying, a long-term care crisis looms, and too many Americans may not realize that not only will nursing home care be tough to find and afford, it also may be less than ideal. But what happens if seniors themselves — especially the frail old — are asked how care-giving services might….
Continue ReadingDiabetes is serious. So why aren’t patients getting more treatment help?
Doctors, hospitals, health officials, and disease advocacy groups race to warn about diabetes’ risks, harms, and increasing prevalence. But why, then, doesn’t modern medicine also do much more to help diabetics with the skyrocketing costs of their care, whether with insulin at excessive prices or with expensive medical aids? Ted Alcorn of the New York Times….
Continue ReadingAmericans in their 60s and 70s struggle as caregivers for older relatives
Life can be hard, lonely, and difficult for adults who must become caregivers for their parents. If that sounds like the challenging story for tens of millions of millennials and Gen-Xers, yes, it’s true. But Judith Graham, in a column for the Kaiser Health News Service, describes what may be an even tougher role for….
Continue ReadingBig, rich hospitals can do much more to battle asthma, opioid drug abuse
Even as they rake in big bucks and ride a tsunami of mergers and consolidations sweeping the U.S. health care system, big hospitals and academic medical centers must step up on patients’ behalf, doing much more, for example, to battle America’s growing asthma woes and the opioid drug abuse epidemic. Kaiser Health News, the Capital….
Continue ReadingA Kansas reminder: Nursing homes over-reliant still on antipsychotic drugs
When families and friends visit Kansas nursing homes, they may be startled to see how listless and lethargic their elderly loved ones may be, especially if the facility residents suffer from dementia. There’s a sad, simple, and likely reason—the seniors may be drugged up with potent anti-psychotics. The Kansas City Star deserves credit for providing….
Continue ReadingA timely reminder that courageous (and lonely) caregivers need our care, too
Pick up that phone. Dash off a text or an email. Issue a dinner invitation or make a date for a casual lunch. Or just drop by to see that friend or loved one who struggles with the burdens of caring for someone in poor physical or mental health. Why now? Why not? Paula Spann….
Continue ReadingBy 2020, will we get our health care at home, not at hospitals?
Dr. Bruce Leff explains why geriatric healthcare is best practiced out of the hospital It wasn’t that long ago — see those classic black-and-white movies — when hospitals commonly cared for many different kinds of patients in large open wards. Young volunteers, women known as “candy stripers,” could be seen rolling carts down the aisles between….
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