“Using the authority under Section 1812(f) of the [Social Security] Act, CMS waived the requirement for a 3-day prior hospitalization for coverage of a SNF stay, which provides temporary emergency coverage of SNF services without a qualifying hospital stay, for those people who experience dislocations, or are otherwise affected by COVID-19,” the agency wrote. It’s this portion of the three-day …
The Joint Commission announced the launch of a new Assisted Living Community (ALC) accreditation program. The program will help assisted living organizations deliver consistent and reliable care for residents. Applications will begin to be accepted on July 1. Today more than 30,000 ALCs in the United States serve more than 80,000 residents. ALCs have been increasingly shifting from a mostly …
A project supported by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging (grant U19AG063893) called “Long Life Family Study” has gathered some interesting data that was published in Medicalxpress.com this month. Their website also has a lot of interesting information, a definite read for those of us caring for elders! In response to a request for applications from the …
“Bacterial colonization and secondary infection have been described in patients hospitalized with COVID-19. At University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, MD.. since early April 2020, critically ill COVID-19 patients had been housed in 3 dedicated units which included 2 intensive care units (ICUs) and 1 intermediate care unit. Units were designed as closed, negative-pressure areas where staff remained in …
On June 10,th, 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Health Alert Network issued a health advisory for parts of the southern United States. Please read the below excerpt for a brief summary, and view the entire advisory at the link at the bottom of this page. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is issuing …
In a study published in JAMA Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, 89% of the SARS-CoV-2-positive, mildly symptomatic patients who had a sudden onset of altered sense of smell or taste, experienced a complete resolution or improvement of these symptoms. Persistent loss of smell or taste was not associated with persistent SARS-CoV-2 infection. At 4 weeks from the initial survey of mildly …
Many of us suffer from insomnia on the best of days but with the pandemic, many suffer from COVID sleep deprivation. You know that feeling, you lay in bed and your mind is racing a thousand miles an hour, doom is hovering overhead right? Well if this describes you, you will be unhappy to know that most humans spend one-third …
An article published on MIT Medical asks the question, “is all this social distancing weakening our immune systems?” According to MIT, the answer is NO, that this is NOT the way our immune system works. The idea that individuals who are exposed to a variety of microbes (i.e., germs) in childhood build better immunity is likely to be true! In …
“We are learning more about the risk factors for severe COVID-19 outcomes every day. Age is the strongest risk factor for severe COVID-19 outcomes. Approximately 54.1 million people aged 65 years or older reside in the United States; this age group accounts for more than 80% of U.S. COVID-19 related deaths. Residents of long-term care facilities make up less than …
According to a recent study published in the Lancet, there is a crisis in the under-treatment of osteoporosis with a decline in the prescribing of oral and intravenous bisphosphonates in the United States. The rates of initiation of osteoporosis medication within 6 months of hospitalization for hip fracture have declined over the past 15 years from 10 to 3%. In …
