by Anne Montgomery What it would take to harness the energies of states to take big leaps forward in key areas – housing supports, transportation supports, workforce supports, family caregiver supports, and employment supports for individuals with disabilities? The answer is, policy that motivates Members of Congress to organize funding and a framework to help […]
By Joanne Lynn Within just a dozen years, the U.S. will have nearly double the current number of frail and disabled elderly people needing daily supportive services. Look around! What is being done to prepare for this expectable increase? Already most cities have long waiting lists for home-delivered meals, and no city in the U.S. […]
by Anne Montgomery Now that the health care sector is focusing on social determinants of health (SDOH) in older adults and actively pursuing partnerships with community-based organizations (CBOs) to meet a surging demand for supportive services, it’s an excellent time to ask: What do we already know from key demonstration programs in this space? Some […]
By Anne Montgomery Time is growing short to make big changes to basic processes for service delivery to elders, who will soon constitute one-fifth of the U.S. population. Basically, we have a mismatch between the health care delivery system and what many older adults actually need. Typically, older adults typically see multiple clinicians working in […]
By Joanne Lynn May 7, 2019 CMMI has announced that they will soon call for proposals for a bevy of new payment models, aiming to reduce hospitalization without harming quality by allowing a great deal of flexibility by practicing primary care clinicians for Part A and Part B services in Medicare and by allowing contracting […]
By Sarah Slocum Across the U.S., we see more and more reports about a shortage of well-trained staff who are committed to providing in-home and other long term supports and services. The pinch of the shortage is apparent in many communities where it’s difficult to execute in-home service plans, and residential providers struggle to stay […]
For an enterprise that sometimes seems beleaguered, culture change in nursing homes is a bright spot of positive, forward-looking movement and quality improvement. Yet widespread implementation of culture change – anchored in comprehensive staff training in person-centered care — has not yet happened. Part of the reason is that the specific gains that culture change […]
By Joanne Lynn “Starting in 2020, we are going to be expanding that range of [Medicare Advantage] benefits…to include home modifications, home-delivered meals, and more.” — Alex Azar, Secretary of HHS [The Root of the Problem: America’s Social Determinants of Health, November 14, 2018, as prepared for delivery] Aha! Medicare leadership is awakening to the […]
By Nick Macchione and Joanne Lynn This blog entry was written for the Milbank Memorial Fund and is reposted here with permission. State and local leaders who aim to improve population health must help older Americans live well with the challenges associated with aging. Given the rapidly rising number of elders, local governments have remarkable […]
By Anne Montgomery Originally published in AgingToday Volume xxxix: Number 6; November–December 2018 and is reposted here with permission. In America and worldwide, the “age wave” has gathered in force—no more so than in Japan, where 27 percent of the population is already older than age 65, a number that will rise to 40 percent […]