Group items tagged

http://seniorhealth.about.com/od/eldercare/a/home_care_opt.htm Nursing home is a home combined with skilled nursing care, rehabilitative care, medical services, personal care, and recreation in a supervised and environment. letting your love ones stay in the nursing home may be hardest decision but choosing the right home will be next hardest. Entering the nursing home doesn't mean that the family involvement ends, instead it is their responsibility to make sure that the home care provides good care. Remember the following when choosing the best home care: * Have a discussion with the loved one who will be living there. This will aid in adjusting to the major life change about to occur. * Work together with other family members and inquire for help in finding the best nursing home. * Be in touch with doctors, nurses, or any other health professionals or social workers who care for your loved one. * Chat with some nursing home employees, especially assistants since they give most of the care. * Solicit a pastor or rabbi for guidance. * Contact the long-term care ombudsman. People often think that home care is expensive and yes nursing home care can be expensive. It can differ widely depending on where you live but often the average cost is more than $50,000 a year and rising. Sadly, employee health insurance does not pay for nursing home care. A great number of nursing home residents, about a third of its population, pay all of their nursing home expenses from their own funds. Long stay in a home care can consume all your or your loved one's savings fast. There are many who exhaust their finances after just six months. And about a five percent of them buys long-term care insurance, which covers the cost of a nursing home or other extended care. Medicare, the federal health insurance program for older persons and some younger ones with disabilities, pays for short-term nursing home stays but the rest, about two-thirds, are from the Medicaid.

http://news.springhillcaregroup.net/2013/05/14/labor-group-fights-for-better-pay-for-home-care-workers/ Americans live longer base from the statistics, thus making the population age and as it ages the need for home care workers will grow significantly. According to the Bureau of Labor Standards, the Home Care Workforce will grow from 1.7 Million to 2.6 million in 2018, but the people caring for seniors in their homes earn on average less than 10 dollars an hour and many do not get benefits. A number of those workers assembled at the Food and Medicine Headquarters in Brewer Thursday to encourage their Senators to make it a priority to improve pay, benefits and training for this growing workforce. Helen Hanson stood at a podium from her huddling under the tent and shared her financial struggles during her work as a home care worker. "My bills are paid but when the oil tank is down do I pay the mortgage or do I spend 350 dollars to put 100 gallons in the oil tank," she said. Although Hanson loves going into peoples' homes to care for them she couldn't make the ends meet. So instead, she went to work at a rehab facility as a certified nurse and she got better pay and benefits. This kind of problem is one example of a nationwide concern. "We have 3 million direct care health workers in the country right now and we're projecting 27 million seniors by 2050," Pointed out Reverend Mark Doty, one of those gathered at the Food and Medicine Rally. The pro workers group had a stage demonstration where they showed how hard their work is. The demonstration is even complete with a juggler to show how complicated it is for home care workers to juggle their responsibilities. Everything is happening while caring for a growing number of seniors and finding an easy solution may be a juggling act too. The issue becomes how to pay for a better wage for them after all agree that home care workers should be paid well. Vickie Purgavie, executive director of the Home Care a

As the American population grows rapidly, the field of healthcare becomes alert of the upcoming strong demand for senior healthcare providers. view link here: http://www.redgage.com/blogs/trishakolens/springhill-group-home-demand-for-personal-care-aides-expected-to-grow.html Personal care providers do not really do physically invasive therapies and are not under the supervision of a nurse, there are no existing federal qualifications in place for this profession.

A new study published this week in the Sleep journal has discovered that sleep problem decreases with age; basically contradicting the common belief that sleep problem comes with age. A group of researchers from Center for Sleep of Pennsylvania University along with other organizations conducted a survey of 155,877 people from all ages who has previously reported sleep disturbances. Their study aims to find the answer on how sleep complaints alter as a person age. The study was conducted by asking participants how often within the past 2 weeks they had problems staying or falling asleep as well as the number of days they have felt tired. Their telephone survey has resulted in the conclusion that sleep quality, in fact, gets better as you get older. They found a general decline in sleep tiredness across higher age groups. Actually, women and men older than 80 are the least likely among the age groups to complain of sleep problems. According to the study, poor overall health conditions and depression are both connected with sleep problems as those who have mild depression appear more twice as likely to report sleep disorders. Basically, it shows that once you have control of mood and health, people dont necessarily have more sleep problems. Experts seem to be disputing the results of the study as the method of data collection done is generally subjective (participants were only asked about their physical symptoms) as opposed to previous researches done through objective data gathering (e.g. monitoring patients' sleep patterns in laboratory room) which could be the reason for the result difference. A single study cannot hope to change the health care implementation. But considering that the sample size of the study is large, it will be hard to discount the results. Besides, the question given was so general that it captures the entirety of sleep disorders. The results of this study is essentially contrad

Patients with sickle cell disease move from pediatric to adult health care because they now depend more on the emergency room, says researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Reported at the American Society of Hematology's annual meeting in Atlanta, more than 3,200 patients with sickle cell disease demonstrates that emergency room visits tripled from age 15 to age 24 this is according to the study of Medicaid data. According to hematologist Morey A. Blinder, MD, associate professor of medicine, "There seems to be a breakdown in medical care during the transition from childhood to adulthood. Not only emergency department usage, but hospitalizations go up during this time as well." Blinder further added that one possible explanation for the increased reliance on emergency care is the relative lack of adult health care providers with experience caring for sickle cell patients. Alarming similar issues are arising for other pediatric diseases, such as cystic fibrosis and hemophilia. The said illnesses were previously fatal. What is more sad about the problem is over the past few decades the number of children and teenagers are living into adulthood with these conditions increased. What makes the matters worse is there often aren't enough primary care physicians who can provide care for these adult patients. Many are not familiar to the understanding of the sickle cell disease. It refers to a number of inherited genetic conditions the "sickle" shape red blood cells aren't normal, they are suppose to be normally round, disk-like red blood cells. The problems with these malformed red blood cells are prone to clogging smaller blood vessels and they do not carry oxygen to the body as well as healthy cells. The condition often causes pain in places the cells block blood flow that sometimes causes more severe complications include blindness, strokes and pneumonia. Medical patients from five states including Florida, New Jersey

Springhill Home Care Group Korea Reviews Seoul Employs Elderly to Tackle Phone Waste http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/2013/07/25/seoul-employs-elderly-to-tackle-phone-waste/ South Koreans are among the world's most frequent phone upgraders, buying about 15 million new mobile phones each year, according to a recent report by market research firm DigiEco. One of the problems that creates is the handling of all the discarded older phones. To tackle the issue of electronics waste, or e-waste, the Seoul city government started a program called Eco City in 2009 to collect used electronics. It runs a waste handling facility called Seoul Resource Center in the northeast of the capital and employs elderly or low-income people to break them down and process the parts. Eco City is unique in that it is an entirely government-funded and directed operation. In Tokyo, the municipal government invited private companies to set up recycling facilities, while China has struggled to deal with large amounts of e-waste both produced domestically and imported. Seoul's Eco City says each discarded mobile phone has between 2,500 won and 4,000 won (about US$2.23-$3.50) worth of metals in it, including rare earth metals such as neodymium. At intervals of six months or a year, companies can bid to purchase the waste that has been gathered and sorted by Eco City. Whatever can't be sold or reused is incinerated. http://springhillcaregroup.net/ http://news.springhillcaregroup.net/

Home Instead Senior Care, the nation's largest provider of in-home companion care services, today announced the launch of its Protect Seniors from FraudSM program. This new initiative empowers older Americans and their families by arming them with the information and tools they need to help protect themselves from con artists targeting the elderly. These scammers are proving successful with victims of elder financial abuse currently estimated to experience an annual financial loss of $2.9 billion.* Often retired, less mobile, more reliant on others and home for unannounced calls or visits, seniors are frequently perceived as "easy prey" by scammers. Seniors are also quickly becoming the largest population segment. Coupled, these trends increase the risk for a number of crimes -particularly those involving identity theft, Medicaid/Medicare fraud and financial exploitation. "Increasingly, scams targeting seniors are a threat to the financial stability and safety of our nation's seniors, putting many at risk for losing their life savings or homes-not to mention their trust in others," said Jisella Dolan, Vice President and General Counsel, Home Instead, Inc., the franchisor for Home Instead Senior Care. "But there are easy steps seniors and their families can take to help prevent these crimes. Protect Seniors from Fraud will help reduce the risk by educating potential victims." The Protect Seniors from Fraud program, developed with expert advice from senior-crime prevention organization the National Association of Triads, Inc., provides a number of free online resources, including a Senior Fraud Protection Kit with scam prevention tips, risk assessment tools, and advice on what to do if you or a loved one is scammed. Specific precautions found in these materials, which seniors and their families can implement to help avoid falling victim to con artists, include: Shredding any documents useful to crimin

tHis was a pretty cool post..

In USA TODAY's article "The underlying duel of 2012: Seniors vs. Millennials," GOP volunteer Immo Sulyok is quoted saying about Election Day: "I'll be there, or I'll be dead." As will I, but my vote will be for President Obama ("A defining gap: Seniors for Romney, Millennials for Obama") I believe that our major concern should be educating our young. It is unbelievably arrogant for seniors like me to worry about only our welfare, finances and health. We had our day in the sun. The future generation is being short-changed by cuts in education spending and the increasing cost of higher education. We are witnessing the dumbing-down of America. There is also so much misinformation floating around about the Affordable Care Act and so much we mere citizens do not understand. Many rely on radio or TV talk-show hosts to teach us, and unfortunately, the hosts "teach" their opinions. Perhaps we should still think for ourselves. Joan LaRose; San Diego Older voters remember There is a different sense of history that divides Millennials and those 65 and older. Older voters remember the Cuban missile crisis, the Cold War and the hot Korean War and Vietnam conflict. Seniors served and sacrificed in Korea and Vietnam to defend the free world against communism. They have seen what communism wrought in Eastern Europe and Asia. This brave generation will vote in droves for Mitt Romney to prevent President Obama from transforming a free America into a socialist or communist one. Paul Hoylen Jr.; Deming, N.M. Elderly rely on entitlements The great majority of older Americans are expected to vote for Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for president, in the upcoming election. Ironically, most of these senior citizens depend heavily on Social Security and Medicare for survival. Both of these programs were enacted by Democratic presidents and Congresses controlled by Democrats! What are these seniors thinking? Bob Hamlett; Nashville GOP plan causes concerns While I am 65

A perfect info source. Thanks for taking the time to discuss this, I feel strongly about it and love learning more on this topic.

Springhill Care Group Labor Group fights for better pay for Home Care Workers Americans live longer base from the statistics, thus making the population age and as it ages the need for home care workers will grow significantly. According to the Bureau of Labor Standards, the Home Care Workforce will grow from 1.7 Million to 2.6 million in 2018, but the people caring for seniors in their homes earn on average less than 10 dollars an hour and many do not get benefits. A number of those workers assembled at the Food and Medicine Headquarters in Brewer Thursday to encourage their Senators to make it a priority to improve pay, benefits and training for this growing workforce. Helen Hanson stood at a podium from her huddling under the tent and shared her financial struggles during her work as a home care worker. "My bills are paid but when the oil tank is down do I pay the mortgage or do I spend 350 dollars to put 100 gallons in the oil tank," she said. Although Hanson loves going into peoples' homes to care for them she couldn't make the ends meet. So instead, she went to work at a rehab facility as a certified nurse and she got better pay and benefits. This kind of problem is one example of a nationwide concern. "We have 3 million direct care health workers in the country right now and we're projecting 27 million seniors by 2050," Pointed out Reverend Mark Doty, one of those gathered at the Food and Medicine Rally. The pro workers group had a stage demonstration where they showed how hard their work is. The demonstration is even complete with a juggler to show how complicated it is for home care workers to juggle their responsibilities. Everything is happening while caring for a growing number of seniors and finding an easy solution may be a juggling act too. The issue becomes how to pay for a better wage for them after all agree that home care workers should be paid well. Source: http://news.springhillcaregroup.net/2013/05/14/labor-gr

Springhill Home Care Group: Mid-life stress 'precedes dementia' http://springhillcaregroup.net/archives/269 Current evidence suggest the best ways to reduce the risk of dementia are to eat a balanced diet, take regular exercise, not smoke, and keep blood pressure and cholesterol in check" - Dr Simon Ridley Alzheimer's Research UK According to the latest research, women who suffer from a lot of stress in middle age may increase their risk of developing dementia in later life. Furthermore the study says that mid-life stress may increase a woman's risk of developing dementia. Eight hundred women were subjected to study and they have found out that those who had to cope with events such as divorce or bereavement were more likely to get Alzheimer's decades later. BMJ Open reports says, the more stressful events there were, the higher the dementia risk became. According to the study authors, stress hormones may be to blame, triggering harmful alterations in the brain. Many changes in the body is caused by stressed hormones, it can also affect many things like blood pressure and blood sugar control. And they can remain at high levels many years after experiencing a traumatic event, Dr Lena Johansson and colleagues explain. However they also claim that they need more work to verify their findings and determine whether the same stress and dementia link might also occur in men. The study went like this, the women underwent a battery of tests and examinations when they were in either their late 30s, mid-40s or 50s, and then again at regular intervals over the next four decades. One in four women said at some part in the start of the study that they had experienced at least one stressful event, such as widowhood or unemployment. A comparable proportion had suffered at least two stressful events, whereas one in five had experienced at least three. The remaining women had either experienced more than this or none. Four hundred twenty five of the women died and 153