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Under Medicare鈥檚 hospice benefit, patients agree to forgo curative treatment, but they can continue to receive coverage for health problems not related to their terminal illness. Federal officials suspect some of those expenses should be covered by hospice.
Pleasing patients has become more important to hospitals as Medicare takes consumers views into account when setting payments. Most hospitals are getting better, but others have not improved since the government started publishing ratings six years ago.
New federal rules requiring current information apply to insurers selling plans on healthcare.gov and the private policies that are an alternative to Medicare.
A special 鈥渄aycare at night鈥 program in the Bronx cares for Alzheimer鈥檚 patients whose internal clocks mistake night for day.
For many physicians, normal pressure hydrocephalus, or NPH, doesn鈥檛 come to mind when they see people with cognitive and gait problems, although it is one of the few treatable causes of dementia.
Obese people are far more likely to become disabled as they age, and researchers say this burgeoning demographic will strain hospitals and nursing homes.
A little known part of Obamacare pays primary care doctors to help overweight seniors drop pounds and improve their health. So why aren鈥檛 more seniors taking advantage of the free benefit?
Nursing homes now will be graded on their use of anti-psychotic drugs and will have to do more to get top ratings on the federal website Nursing Home Compare.
The percentage of Americans experiencing pain in the last year of life increased between 1998 and 2010, despite the growth of palliative care programs and hospice use, according to a study released Monday.
About 400,000 beneficiaries have until the end of this month to reconsider their Medicare Part D plan choices after Aetna incorrectly identified some pharmacies as being in-network, dropped others and removed some from "preferred" network status.
With the growth of the hospice industry, consumers have a number of choices for end-of-life care. Here鈥檚 a primer to help be prepared.
Penalties for readmissions and patient injuries erase bonuses hospitals earn for meeting stiff quality criteria. Fewer than 800 will end up with higher payments.
Getting basic health care to rural areas has always been difficult, and delivering specialized care is even harder. One doctor is raising money to get palliative care to patients in rural California.
In California, hundreds of thousands of low-income elderly and disabled people receive daily care in their homes from their children, spouses, relatives and others. And, through a program called In-Home Supportive Services,聽the state pays many of those caregivers about $10 an hour to do the job.
Health insurance doesn't pay for housing, but sometimes that is what a patient needs most. A Medicaid experiment, called Money Follows The Person, helps some elderly and disabled people move out of institutions into their own homes.
Federal officials handle most of the requests in 2014 from beneficiaries seeking a hearing before a judge and cut into the heavy backlog. But cases from hospitals, doctors and other providers are still on hold.
In 2015, some seniors enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans will be allowed to switch if they lose their doctors.
New nano-meds, miniscule robots embedded in a pill, send signals to an external monitor to record each new medication as it slides through the digestive tract. This will be especially useful for older people, who may not be able to keep track of a panoply of medicines.
The government鈥檚 proposed rule addresses many concerns of accountable care organizations.
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