No sage advice today but came across a poem sent from an activity professionals forum. It came on the heels of a great article in the Charlotte Observer about a young Girl Scout who “adopted” a woman at an assisted living facility. Both the story and poem speak about connecting...
Author Archives: anthony
The Patient and Resident Experience
As a quick update, I wanted to guide you to an article I wrote for Health Leaders recounting my day spent at the Cleveland Clinic meeting with their patient experience team. It might help you understand how health care is evolving and what you should start looking for when evaluating...
Doctor Doctor Give Me the News I Have A Bad Case of Remembering You
A new study by the University of Chicago published in the Archives of Internal Medicine of nearly 3,000 adults admitted to their affiliated hospital reveals that patients are rarely able to identify their doctors by name or to describe their roles in their care. Patients were asked about the roles...
Some Caveats to the Nursing Home Compare 5 Star Rating System
We have said in the past that the Nursing Home Compare site even before the 5 Star rating was introduced was just a start in evaluating nursing facilities. I will continue to share a myriad of tips I have accumulated for evaluating care homes. That said when looking at the...
Look for the Resident Experience When Choosing a Long-Term Care Home
I had the opportunity to write an article for Health Leaders entitled The Chief Experience Officer that looked at having someone in a hospital or long term care facility responsible for how the health care experience is delivered, spiritually, physically, clinically. As a marketer, I wrote it simply to support...
Make Your End of Life Decisions While Your Life is in Full Bloom
There is a great article in the NYT in which they interview a now retired physician Robert L. Martensen about the state of health care. He observes that “most Americans die in hospitals or nursing homes, and neither is configured to take care of dying patients.” So you end up...
Elder Abuse – Families Often Responsible
We often think of abuse of our elders in terms of physical abuse and often associate that with nursing homes. But abuse can also be verbal, financial exploitation. And most abuse comes from family caregivers themselves. The latest study in the British Medical Journal reports that more than half of...
Grandma Is Getting More Exercise Than You
I got a Wii. Woo-hoo. A Christmas present. And guess what, instead of watching television all night and sitting on my a__ I burn at least some calories. And as I have observed in my nursing home travels and speaking engagements, Wii is all the rage with seniors. Califormia, no...
Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
In my keynote The Meaning of Life (so presumptuous huh!) we cover eight basic points that we have learned from older folks about living a quality life. Among them we talk about lifelong learning, having a great attitude and having a broad social network. We have cited studies in the...
Elder Abuse Support
It’s said that it has to come to this. We have blogged before about the Good Samaritan Society Nursing Home in MN and the abuse suffered by residents at the hands of seemingly wholesome teenagers. Now the 15 families of the alleged abuse victims have formed an official support group...