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New Medicare Codes: I Want to Believe
I’ve been hearing rumors that something big was coming but it sounded too incredible, too wonderful, and too good to be true, so I figured it wasn’t. Seems like I was wrong. In the past few weeks, the...
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Social Workers and Their Integral Role in Interdisciplinary Team Care
We believe very strongly that interprofessional teams provide the best care, especially for older people with serious multiple chronic conditions. In direct care as a geriatric social worker, I worked...
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Debate Over Hospital Readmissions Policy Is Essential to Better Care
A recent New York Times article noted a “growing chorus of critics” questioning the fairness of new Medicare financial penalties on hospitals with high readmission rates. While it was certainly a...
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Attack on Medicare’s Hospital Readmissions Penalty Program Is Off-Base
There is a yawning chasm between the health care system we want and what we have. Crossing that gorge will be a messy and inconvenient process—but necessary. While many of us in the geriatrics...
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Medicare readmissions reduction reform is complex, scary—and absolutely...
Last Friday I was at a session of the National Health Policy Forum (NHPF) in Washington D.C. focused on Medicare’s readmission reduction program The program, authorized under section 3025 of the...
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The Hospital Readmissions Debate: A Primer
In recent months, the debate over how best to reduce avoidable hospital readmissions has become a hot topic in the national media. While many are just now joining the fray, the John A. Hartford...
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Why Can’t a Hospital Be More Like an Airline?
Because I spent nearly 30 years as a flight attendant for a major airline, and I now work for a not-for-profit foundation devoted to improving health care for older people, I often find myself...
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Tools You Can Use: Geriatric Transitions Objective Structured Video Examination
Dr. Timothy W. Farrell, right, from the video series depicting a patient undergoing transitions of care across different locations of care. It happens all too often: Older adults “fall through the...
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Equality Does Not Equal Lowering Health Care Standards for the Poor
July is an important month in history, with Bastille Day, on July 14, coming just 10 days after our own 4th of July. So what better time to consider issues of justice and equality? There are lots of...
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Health Services Research Needs Good Theory to Turn into Better Practice
Last week, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a large and well-designed study of a post-hospital readmission reduction program called the “virtual ward,” which grew up in...
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Care Transitions Evaluation Is Premature and Confusing
As Orson Welles might have said: “We will evaluate no program before its time.” One of the first things you learn in “foundation school” is how easy it is to kill even great programs by evaluating them...
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