Category: Seniors / Aging

“It’s a very come and go disease,” writes Cary Henderson, a man with Alzheimer’s Disease. “When I make a blunder, I tend to get defensive about it. I have a sense of shame for not knowing what I should have known. And, for not being able to think things and see things that I saw several years ago, when I was a ‘normal’ person. But everybody, by this time, knows that I’m not a normal person. And I’m quite aware of that.” Henderson is not alone.

A CMS audit of Humana, one of the nation’s largest Medicare insurers, raises concerns that the company has not done enough to curb misleading sales practices to the elderly and people with disabilities, AP/Long Island Newsday reports.

A CMS audit of Humana, one of the nation’s largest Medicare insurers, raises concerns that the company has not done enough to curb misleading sales practices to the elderly and people with disabilities, AP/Long Island Newsday reports.

Paramedics can be educated to handle some conditions for elderly people in the community, says an article in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). Approximately one fifth of all hospital emergency department visits involve older people. The authors explain that current evidence regarding the effectiveness, safety and costs to support these changes in practice is insufficient.

Columbia University will award the 2007 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize to Joseph G. Gall, Ph.D., a cell biologist at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Embryology, Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Ph.D., a biologist and physiologist at the University of California, San Francisco and Carol W. Greider, Ph.D., a molecular biologist and geneticist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Columbia University will award the 2007 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize to Joseph G. Gall, Ph.D., a cell biologist at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Embryology, Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Ph.D., a biologist and physiologist at the University of California, San Francisco and Carol W. Greider, Ph.D., a molecular biologist and geneticist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

The Gerontological Society of America (GSA) has received a five year, $5 million renewal grant from the John A. Hartford Foundation of New York, NY to provide financial and career support for 39 doctoral fellows in geriatric social work and awards for 60 pre-dissertation doctoral students.

The Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care said a new BDO Seidman study of the nation’s Medicaid program released today draws much needed attention to a chronic and worsening problem: Medicare’s cross-subsidization of increasingly inadequate Medicaid payments for nursing home care.

The Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care said a new BDO Seidman study of the nation’s Medicaid program released today draws much needed attention to a chronic and worsening problem: Medicare’s cross-subsidization of increasingly inadequate Medicaid payments for nursing home care.

Older U.S. adults are twice as likely as older European adults to have a number of chronic diseases, many of which are related to obesity and smoking, according to a study published Tuesday on the Web site of the journal Health Affairs, the Los Angeles Times reports (Girion, Los Angeles Times, 10/2).