Assisted Living Centers Competition

Despite the state’s aging population, the common age of Ohio nursing-home citizens has decreased from 83.1 years to 77.3 in less than two years, according to a state-commissioned report. Several reasons underlie the pattern. On one hand, far more senior Ohioans who would have been in assisted living centers 20 years ago are in their own homes today, thanks to the state’s focus on less-expensive home-health services. Among Ohioans, at least 60 years of age who need help looking after for themselves, 55% obtained proper care in a seniors care facility this year compared with 91% in 1993. And the state now is based far less on nursing-home care than in the 90’s, when Ohio had one of the highest rates of nursing-home use and its State Medicaid programs per-capita nursing-home expenses were among the biggest in the country.

Ohio’s rate has enhanced from 47th among states, to 24th, said Bob Applebaum, director of the Ohio Long-term Care Research Project at Miami University’s Scripps Gerontology Center. “It symbolizes an amazing success tale for the state,” he said. But a malfunction in the state’s healthcare system also is a factor in the lower regular age of nursing-home citizens, Applebaum said. The number of nursing-home citizens younger than 60 more than tripled between 1994 and 2012, from 4% to 12.7%. And 1 in 6 State Medicaid enrollees residing in assisted living centers was younger than 60 this year. That is an increase of 26% from 1997 and coincided with an 11% drop in the number of State Medicaid programs enrollees older than 60 in assisted living centers.

In the spring of 2012, there were 8,723 State Medicaid program enrollees younger than 60 in assisted living centers. Of them, 18.5% needed no assistance with “activities of daily living” such as showering, putting on clothes, eating and self care. Competition from assisted-living centers and home-health organizations also has forced assisted living facilities to keep prices down, Applebaum said. Ohio has kept speed with its growing inhabitants of elderly citizens with serious problems, but that growth is expected to speed up over the next 25 years, increasing in size.

Global Healthcare Conference

Healthcare management from the private market and government departments will discuss improvement of global efforts to implement GS1 Standards that improve individual safety, provide chain security and efficiency during the International GS1 Healthcare Conference going on in San Francisco, Oct 1-3, 2013, at the Hilton San Francisco Financial District. Speakers from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), California Board of Pharmacy, McKesson, Johnson & Johnson, Mercy, Pfizer and Premier will discuss best methods for applying GS1 Standards in healthcare.

More than 250 members from medical centers, producers, providers, market companies, government and regulating companies from 25 countries are expected to attend the conference. The three-day conference, designed “GS1 Standards in Action,” is organized by GS1 Healthcare US, an industry standards team targeted on driving the execution of GS1 Standards in the United States. “With individual safety at stake, market and government authorities globally are in lock-step to create techniques that will enable healthcare members to take better charge of the product information that flows throughout the supply chain, both locally and worldwide,” said Eileen Pheney, vice chairman of healthcare, GS1 US. “The conference offers global healthcare supply chain professionals understanding about standards execution techniques and improvement as well as market and regulating improvements in automatic recognition, traceability and information synchronization.”

Speakers represent multiple facets of the international healthcare supply chain, hailing from government departments, regulating bodies, medical industry companies, U.S. team purchasing companies, medical centers, producers, providers and retailers. Features include:

  • An opening plenary period targeted on unique device identification (UDI) with speakers from the U.S. FDA, the Japanese people Ministry for Health Welfare  and Labor and others.
  • A period targeted on medical center execution of GS1 Standards, with demonstrations by providers such as Whim (U.S.) and Hospital Aleman (Argentina).
  • Presentations by international companies and regulating companies, such as the World Customs Organization and California Board of Pharmacy.
  • Perspectives from providers, such as Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and McKesson.
  • Closing keynote about bedside scanning by Mark Neuenschwander, an expert in drug providing automated and bar code point-of-care systems.

Growth of In-Home Senior Care

The impressive number of elderly people across the nation opting to stay in their own houses as they age is developing a positive impact on the economy, driving growth not only for businesses that are dedicated to various aspects of senior care, but also resulting in significant job creation. By 2020, the rankings of house wellness and individual care aides will have grown by more than 1.3 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. BrightStar Care, a full-service house care series that provides both healthcare and non-medical care to sufferers from babies to elderly people, has hired more than 23,000 people since 2011, developing 10,000-12,000 jobs each season, with programs to create 60,000 new jobs over the next five years.

In addition, according to majority of folks by the U.S. Census Bureau, the healthcare market generated $1.7 billion dollars in complete revenue this year and included nearly 17 million jobs across the United States. BrightStar Care is supporting these statistics with 258 franchised and corporate locations across 36 states. In total, BrightStar Care utilizes more than 16,000 healthcare teams, certified nursing assistants (CNAs), and home health aides (HHAs), including 2,000 RNs, 2,300 Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs) and Licensed Vocational Nurses (LVNs). Nearly all adults over the age of 50 feel that staying in their own houses as they age is important, according to a latest survey by AARP. With the demand for in-home senior care rising, in addition to the fact that the in-home healthcare profession provides flexible working hours and the ability to develop strong, individual relationships with sufferers, the market is growing.

“Each year, more and more elderly people are starting the process of ‘ageing in place’,” explained Shelly Sun, Co-Founder and CEO of BrightStar Care. “At the same time, many healthcare teams are looking into alternative career options to working in a hospital. BrightStar Care is one of the only in-home healthcare care businesses that provide highly-skilled therapy to sufferers in their houses, allowing healthcare teams to utilize their skills in a non-traditional, growing sector of the market.” BrightStar Care identifies a need within the healthcare care market for homecare solutions that offer high-level, medical skills. Consumers are looking for expert and sympathetic care that only BrightStar Care provides.

Respiratory Therapist Education Development

Noelle is a constantly expecting mannequin who lives at the University of Virginia’s School of Nursing.  She has a pulse rate and blood pressure, joint parts at the hip, eyes that open, knee and ankle, a uterus, a baby who has been delivered a lot of times and thanks to various laptop or software applications, she speaks. “My back is killing me.  I’m so weak.  Please, I need something for the pain! “ Noelle is one of seven high-tech mannequins at UVA.  She costs $60,000.  A male design, who sweats, has convulsions and is wi-fi, costs $90,000.  But the lab’s associate director Linda Peffley-Firer says it’s a smart financial commitment.

“Yes – knowledge is expensive, but you know what?  So are lives, so we train here.” And university student Leslie Murphy says practice is the key to competent care. “You do things over and over and over again and then it becomes more second nature, so that when we get into the hospital with actual sufferers, we do not have to think so much about, ‘Am I holding the needle right,’ or, ‘Is the blood pressure cuff the right size?’  Everything that you believed simple, like one-step procedure actually has 25 actions you did not observe them doing.”

Lab  Manager Reba Moyer-Childress contributes that university students learn to work as a group, since many professionals may be engaged in looking after for sufferers. “How do we make sure that they are where we want them to be?  How do we make sure that that mom who is in distress gets to the OR in a timely fashion?  How will the anesthesiologist and the respiratory therapist respond?  I mean Noelle has had sometimes 30 people with her in the OR, trying to help save her child and her life.”

“Please help me. One more push. One more push. Got a go.  You are almost there.  Shoulder area now.  She is here.  You have got a baby girl!” Each simulated medical scenario is noticed from a control room and documented. There’s a camera at each place, so learners can record themselves and go back and review it on their own and enhance their performance.” After each period, respiratory therapist learners sit with their teachers to discuss what went right, what went wrong and what could be done in a different way.

Optimizing Patient Care and Safety

Rideout Health, a non-profit community-based healthcare program, and RGP Healthcare™, a department of Resources Global Professionals (NASDAQ: RECN), declared that Rideout has selected and is applying Pavisse™,  a cutting-edge technology for tracking and guaranteeing individual protection. Rideout operates facilities and services located throughout Yuba, Sutter and The state of Nevada counties. They include acute-care healthcare centers Rideout Memorial and Fremont Medical Center; the Heart Center at Rideout; the Rideout Cancer Center, associated with UC Davis Medical Center; out-patient primary and specialized treatment centers and a host of additional services, such as senior living services, home health, hospice and durable healthcare equipment.

Pavisse, developed by RGP Healthcare, is a new extensive occurrence control solution designed to help healthcare centers manage individual safety, individual privacy and other compliance-related functions across the enterprise. “We will be one of the first healthcare centers in the Sacramento region to set up this software,” said Istikram Qaderi, M.D., Senior V.P. and Chief Quality Officer at Rideout. “We’ll first set up Pavisse at Rideout Memorial and once the program is running nicely, we’ll look to using it at other locations in our organization to help us continually monitor and improve the superiority of our patient care, which is always our priority.”

Dr. Qaderi, a former physician, moved his career focus recently to helping healthcare and patient care organizations work with doctors and other staff to arrange clinical care and patient-centered solutions in applications for performance improvement. He has spoken and published substantially on subjects such as quality, doctor and team engagement, safety, individual fulfillment, performance quality and culture change. Dr. Qaderi sees RGP Healthcare President Radgia Cook as an “innovator” in patient safety and incident control and further described the Pavisse product as life changing. “Pavisse is just one of several state-of-the-art tools we will use to deliver on this objective,” Dr. Qaderi said. “It is extensive, user-friendly, and easy to set up and personalized to each facility’s needs. And RGP professionals are available to help us reap the most benefit.”

Said Cook, “Rideout Health is just the type of forward-thinking partner we sought. We are thrilled about integrating with Rideout Health as they continue to serve as a national model for the delivery of quality healthcare.”

Taking the CLEP Exam

Should my kid use the CLEP assessments to get credit for college courses? This question resonates with many families looking to reduce the price of college. The CLEP program has increased in popularity over the last few years. Be home more, reduce costs and get college credit. Sounds like a win-win situation, but consider all the facts before moving head first into this new effort.

The College-Level Examination Program ® or CLEP is a program that allows learners of any age the chance to gain college credit through a series of examinations in undergrad higher teaching programs. Like AP programs, there are several advantages to doing well on CLEP assessments. The CLEP program is not necessarily used as replacement for college. Many learners take these assessments to prepare and improve their college experience.

Benefits:

  • Take fewer classes in college. You can get college credit for information you already know. If you have already studied a particular subject, you can route that information into college time and get credit for your secondary school information. CLEP-ing out of starter classes can also help you jump into the more advanced and interesting programs college has to offer.
  • Spend less cash on education and studying. CLEP examinations coast approximately $65, which is cheaper when compared to the price of college credit hour. CLEP examinations are also free to those who are serving in the army.
  • Finish your Degree. If you lack certain programs to be eligible for graduating, CLEP examinations can be great way to help you get those last few college hours.

Disadvantages:

  • Reliability of your degree. Many families have decided to have their kid do all their college work through some form of “distance learning” program. Although correspondence programs have grown in approval, many companies and institutions of higher learning are hesitant to accept these degrees as genuine.
  • Longer than you think. Some programs claim that a four year degree can be obtained in six months through accelerated studying and then CLEP-ing out of normal college classes. Don’t just take the word of someone who has written a book; do more research to find out if this is actually possible.

Knowing if the Hospital is Great

You or someone you care about, need to go into a hospital. Isn’t that risky these days? First there was the Francis report into Stafford hospital that found at least 1,200 fatalities over five years could have been avoided. Then, the NHS medical director Bruce Keogh’s review into other unable medical centers led to “hit squads” being put into 11 medical centers to reduce avoidable fatalities. Since being ill can make even the most confident person feel insecure, you should check out how excellent a medical center is before you set foot inside.

You can piece together some proof for the quality of any NHS hospital. Excellent care is determined as safe, medically effective and offering an excellent experience for sufferers. A basic high quality test is the hospital’s standard loss of life rate, which determines the chance of an individual passing away (allowing for their condition, age and social background) in contrast to the actual number of fatalities in different medical centers. This is available in Dr Foster’s Good Hospital Guide and is one way to recognize badly doing medical centers.

A document in the New England Journal of Medicine says its value is restricted because there are various methods for evaluating hospital death rates that can give very different results. You may also want to look for high quality signs other than risk of dying. The Care Quality Commission also generates hospital opinions that include whether employment levels are acceptable. Your GP will get opinions about medical centers, especially which ones terminate sessions or functions at the last minute, being screwed about is disturbing and undesirable when you have taken holiday time. NHS Choices has scores and opinions on medical centers from sufferers in which people are requested if they would suggest the medical center or ward to close relatives. The website Patient Opinion has many conversations from sufferers about their excellent care and a variety of reactions from medical centers.

Nursing Education Diversity

When you think of a nursing professional, what exactly is the first image that comes to mind? Chances are, you think of a woman and for valid reasons. Many professional nurses in the U.S. are white females. In fact, only about 6 % of nursing staff are men and, considering men make up approximately half of the population and minorities are 30 %, there’s a major difference in the career.

That difference is shown in equal measure in nursing educational institutions, both in the student population and staff. Experts claim improving the diversity in nursing education will improve nursing care by developing more culturally delicate nursing care employees with improved interaction abilities, reduced tendencies and generalizations and fewer inequities, as well as increasing the variety of the nursing education faculty.

At a time when the healthcare system is faced with a nursing shortage caused at least partly by a lack of nursing teachers, some claim men and minorities signify a low competition resource for hiring new teachers. They believe that by developing new opportunities to entice typically underrepresented communities to the field, we can both fix the lack and create a considerable improvement to our healthcare delivery program. While minorities have made great progress in other typically white-dominated areas and ladies have done the same in typically men areas, nursing is one area where diversity projects seem to have been worthless.

In the case of men, much of the resistance to nursing as a career comes from a social understanding of nursing being a “female” career. Men say that while they enjoy the care giving aspects of the job, it’s difficult when others ask questions or make comments deriding their career choice. For example, male nurses report being asked why they did not choose to become physicians, with the connotation that they did not earn adequate grades or were too lazy to become physicians. In addition, men say that feeling left out of the career, with most training and expert development materials making reference to nurses as “she” and a female-centric approach to teaching and training.

LVN to RN Career Switch

For many people starting out in the medical care field, becoming an LVN provides a great probability to easily get into the medical field and discover an entry-level position at a local medical care service. However, because the LVN program provides only a newbie’s level of education in the area of nursing, LVNs sometimes end up having problems discovering possibilities to relocate their profession due to their deficiency of know-how. LVNs that are enthusiastic about improving their wage and LVNs that want more profession possibilities will do best going back to school and making their degree in authorized nursing.

Luckily, there are choices available to an LVN that will make shifting into their medical program fast and fluid. The LVN to RN programs which may be provided at certain institutions gives certified professional nursing staff to be able to take extra medical programs and get their nursing certificate in less time than it would normally take a college student to become a nurse. The two most common LVN to RN programs schools provide learners consist of the ASN and BSN degrees. Depending on the school or college that provides the conversion program, LVNs may be able to apply as much as 1 year worth of credits towards the LVN to RN program. Those who decide to get into the program may have to take a 1 credit conversion course, so that they can make the conversion as smooth as possible. LVNs may also be needed to take a number of requirement programs before being given access into the LVN to RN program.

Did you know that there are some benefits that you might want to consider that will make you think about shifting from an LVN to RN? First, an LVN cannot work without supervision by a physician or nurse. There is something to be said about having independence and power in your work. Also, while you can do a lot of the same techniques, you cannot do all the same things that an RN can. There are many factors that you will get when you make the change from LVN to RN. You will get a certain amount of professional independence, and, let us not ignore, professional courtesy. The income is better as well. This will require a little more compromise, but the benefits are well worth the effort.

Hospice Care and the Medical Marijuana Bill

Though medicinal marijuana will soon be lawful in certain states, physicians say it will have little to no effect on their day-to-day functions. Whether dealing with sufferers in hospice care or those with HIV or AIDS, hospice care providers do not see marijuana becoming one of their go-to medication. Barbara Lafrante, a health professional and director of hospice and palliative care with Home Health & Hospice in Merrimack, said there are already drugs on the market that provide the same advantages that marijuana is said to have. Lafrante, who rests on the New Hampshire Hospice and Palliative Care Association, recommended “Marinol,” an artificial cannibanoid, which provides identical outcomes. She said most physicians will convert to that medication because it has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

“We have a lot of drugs currently, you know, that we use to provide control for our sufferers,” Lafrante said. “Our sufferers are well-palliated when we use Marinol, an FDA-approved type. And we hardly ever need that.” In an organization where Lafrante said she recognizes about 80 to 100 sufferers weekly with six months or less to live, Home Health & Hospice’s guarantee is to remove the discomfort within 48 hours. “Comfort is the concern,” she said. Wendy LeBlanc, vice chairman of the Southern New Hampshire HIV/AIDS Task Force based in Nashua, said this bill will have little effect on individuals she works with, as well. Using marijuana to fight the devastating outcomes of AIDS is less common than it once was, LeBlanc said. And thanks to new medication and therapies, many HIV and AIDS sufferers do not get as fed up as they once did and some of the drugs used to cure the illness do not come with the same side-effects, like nausea and fatigue, she included.

“It was much more commonly known and approved because individuals did not have a hunger and it certainly assisted,” she said. “Traditional drugs have enhanced for individuals living with HIV, especially for individuals clinically diagnosed more recently.” Dr. Karen Baranowski, president and CEO of Home Health & Hospice said for her, the choice to recommend sufferers marijuana is up to their physicians, but she did not see that becoming a large source for them in the long run. “If it’s appropriate for the individual, they will use the FDA Marinol more regularly, I would think about,” she said. People who do depend on the drug often hesitate to discuss it, LeBlanc outlined. The discussion is even restricted among physicians and medical employees. LeBlanc said she knows of just two individuals who recognize using marijuana to help fight their signs.