Melissa Sharp is a 2010 LeadingAge Leadership Academy Fellow (formerly Leadership AAHSA) and LeadingAge invited her to blog about her experience in the program. I was at the Leadership Circle meeting in 2004 when our members identified what kept them awake at night: where would we find the next generation of aging services leaders and [...]This post features a daily digest of news related to aging services as well as LeadingAge, our state partners and members. Have you seen a story that we should share? Please post under “comments.” LeadingAge in the News Smart Money, March 31, 2011, “How to Pick the Right Nursing Home” LeadingAge Member in the News [...]LeadingAge CAST recently developed two new resources to help members start analyzing their potential involvement in Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). One is a whitepaper developed by Dixon Hughes, a LeadingAge Premier Sponsor, in collaboration with LeadingAge CAST titled Post-Acute/Long-Term Care Planning for Accountable Care Organizations. The whitepaper presents what we know about Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), [...]Pines Village Retirement Communities Inc. in Valparaiso, IN. unveiled a collection of 18, never exhibited, watercolor paintings by painter and potter Hazel Hannell on March 20. Artist and longtime friend Harriet Rex was the special guest speaker at the event. Known for her interpretation of wildflowers in watercolors, dunes landscapes and her wood block series, [...]A new study from the University of California Los Angeles’ Center for Health Policy Research examines how the health of LGBT older adults fares in comparison to heterosexual seniors, and the outlook isn’t good. Researchers, using three cycles of data from biennial California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), determined that the state’s 170,000 LGBT seniors in the state were experiencing higher rates of chronic [...]This post features a daily digest of news related to aging services as well as LeadingAge, our state partners and members. Have you seen a story that we should share? Please post under “comments.” Medicaid McKnight’s, March 30, 2011, “Report: Medicaid Overspent On Brand-Name Drugs” LGBT Elders Medical News Today, March 30, 2011, [...]We are pleased to excerpt the Aging Services of California President and CEO’s Joanne Handy’s column from the March 2011 issue of agenda magazine. Thanks to Joanne for her insights with us. Does this sound familiar? You’re running late for a meeting and after circling the block a few times, you finally find a parking spot. [...]On March 22, Nancy Eldridge was my tour guide for a great day of visiting three LeadingAge Vermont members Nancy is the executive director of Cathedral Square Corporation, which owns or manages 24 housing sites in three Vermont counties and also leads our Vermont state affiliate. First, we visited Ruggles House, which is adjacent to the University of [...]This post features a daily digest of news related to aging services as well as LeadingAge, our state partners and members. Have you seen a story that we should share? Please post under “comments.” Nursing Home McKnights, March 29, 2011, “NLRB Upholds Union Claims Of Wrongful Termination At Connecticut Nursing Home” Medicaid McKnights, March 29, [...]LeadingAge encourages members and others to engage with us in advocacy to advance policies that support, enable and empower people to live fully as they age. That’s why Andrew Cruikshank’s guest essay in the Glens Falls, N.Y., Post-Star over the weekend caught my eye. It is a model of the kind of thoughtful advocacy message [...]
A large study of nursing-home residents found a significantly increased risk of death and other adverse outcomes with conventional antipsychotics, antidepressants, and benzodiazepines compared with atypical antipsychotic drugs.
: Pages Home About Videos Links Monday , March 28, 2011 Management of COPD : Lets Just Pretend Older Patients Don't Exist We have previously discussed on GeriPal how the exclusion of older persons from research has left us clueless about how to treat many of the most common conditions in older persons . see here and here and here Well here we go again . A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine on the management of COPD is a rather stunning example of how ignoring the health needs of older persons and not incorporating even the most rudimentary principles of Geriatric Medicine make a large and expensive clinical study virtually meaningless for the majority of patients with COPD . COPD sometimes referred to as emphysema or chronic bronchitis is one of the most common diseases
Are the myths of eating too much sugar and greasy food really true or just another way to fuel the anti-acne industry?
Pharmaceutical companies create medications to only treat the symptoms of diseases, not cure them.
There doesn’t need to be a toxic oil spill in your backyard in order for your water to be poisoned. 
The United States is entering a time of significant growth in Alzheimer’s Disease, according to the Alzheimer’s Association 2011 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figures
15 million people provide care for someone with Alzheimer’s Disease – a 37% increase from last year.
5.4 million people have Alzheimer’s Disease.
Every 69 seconds someone new develops Alzheimer’s, which will increase to [...]Mental decline may start years before Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is diagnosed. Rapid cognitive decline 5-6 years before AD becomes evident is not seen in people who do not develop the disease.
http://tinyurl.com/49lyhtr
Pages Home About Videos Links Tuesday , March 15, 2011 The Past is Hard to Forget when Evaluating New Dementia Screening Tests If we care about primary care physicians actually using the screening tests we develop , then we should care about their accessibility to those clinicians . To put it simply , the more barriers we put in place , the less likely anyone will use them to assess cognitive status in the elderly . The prior gold standard for cognitive screening was the mini-mental status exam MMSE This test used to be freely available online , in books , and on pocket cards that were distributed to medical students and residents throughout the country . This all changed in March of 2001 when MiniMental , LLC the current owners of the MMSE copyright granted Psychological AssessmentOlder adults with a genetic variation associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer's disease had worse performance on cognitive tests if they lived in low-income, high-crime neighborhoods, researchers found.Atrial fibrillation may increase dementia risk for older adults, particularly for those with a history of stroke, a meta-analysis found.