Georgia is dealing with a large backlog of complaints about nursing homes, and also has a substantial vacancy rate in surveyors who check conditions in these facilities, a state health agency said Tuesday. The complaint situation has helped lead to “a mess’’ with federal health officials, Frank Berry, commissioner of the Department of Community Health, told Georgia House lawmakers at a hearing. The nursing home complaints could range from a missing guardrail to a problem with the quality of care, Berry told reporters after a hearing before the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Health. Community Health is prioritizing the complaints,…
The ABA Commission on Law and Aging has posted its 2016 adult guardianship state legislative update. The 24-page update includes information on the 39 state enactments on adult guardianship from 22 states last year. If you are aware of additional legislation passed during the year, please let us know. Access the updated chart. David Wingate is an elder law attorney at the Elder Law Office of David Wingate, LLC. The elder law office services clients with powers of attorneys, living wills, Wills, Trusts, Medicaid and asset protection. The Elder Law office has locations in Frederick and Montgomery Counties,…
NAELA filed an amicus curiae brief in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and joined the oral argument on January 5, in support of two Medicaid applicants asking the court to require “MassHealth,” the state’s Medicaid agency, to comply with federal law in its treatment of trusts holding the Medicaid applicants’ former homes. MassHealth argues that the applicants’ right to live in the houses make the houses “available,” and thus MassHealth can value that use at the entire fair market value of the property. In its brief, written by Emily S. Starr, Ron M. Landsman, CAP (who presented the oral argument),…
Hundreds of disabled seniors in Massachusetts may soon face a daunting choice if they want services under the state’s Medicaid program: Ditch the trusts they set up to pay for extras, such as dental work and a home health aide, or risk losing public benefits. MassHealth, the state’s Medicaid health insurance program for nearly 2 million low-income and disabled residents, is considering changes in eligibility requirements that would make it harder for residents older than 65 to establish special-needs trust accounts and still qualify for nursing home care and other health services from state and federal government agencies. Massachusetts officials…
The Social Security Administration has released a video series on Representative Payee Interdisciplinary Training. The video series includes modules providing key information for serving as a representative payee — an overview of programs administered by SSA; representative payee program policies; roles, duties and responsibilities for representative payees; recognizing signs of abuse and financial exploitation; how to recognize financial abuse and fraud in banking activities; and changes in decisional capacity, including the need to support beneficiaries in decision-making. SSA notes that while the training was developed for representative payees, it also could be helpful for others who work with beneficiaries or…
Healthy kidneys from elderly donors are often rejected, but even kidneys from donors 80 and older can function for years after transplantation, according to a study published online Dec. 15 in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. Luigi Biancone, M.D., of the University of Turin in Italy, and colleagues analyzed results of deceased donor kidney transplants performed at the Turin University Renal Transplant Center between 2003 and 2013. They focused on almost 650 transplants from extended criteria donors — donors older than 60 and those aged 50 to 59 with certain risk factors. After a follow-up of…
Hearing loss appears to be on the decline among Americans in their 40s, 50s and 60s — which may be partly related to reductions in on-the-job noise and smoking rates, according to a study published online Dec. 15 in JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery. Howard Hoffman, of the U.S. National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders in Bethesda, Md., and colleagues analyzed hearing-test results from 3,831 Americans ages 20 to 69 who took part in a federal health survey in 2011 to 2012. Their performance was compared against adults the same age who were studied from 1999 through 2004….
Faced with a budget shortfall now estimated at $1.26 billion, Gov. Terry McAuliffe and General Assembly Republicans are bickering instead over whether the governor proposed to expand Medicaid in the budget he presented legislators on Friday. McAuliffe did not include $2.4 billion in federal funds that Virginia could use to expand the health care program under the Affordable Care Act or an estimated state general fund savings of $213 million that he said could have helped offset spending cuts. Citing “a great deal of uncertainty” over the future of the law, the governor told legislators he chose “the fiscally prudent…
“I’m not just an autistic kid anymore, I have climbed a freaking mountain,” wrote Colin Eldred-Cohen on the release of his book, The Fire Truck Who Got Lost. Eldred-Cohen is a 28-year old creative writer with Asperger’s Syndrome. The Fire Truck Who Got Lost is his first children’s book that became a reality through a highly successful crowdfunding campaign. The Fire Truck Who Got Lost is a wonderful story for children who will meet little Barnabus and the older fire trucks who care for him — Wheelie Dan, Agua, Hogwash, Turpentine and, of course, the Big Dalmatian. Little Barnabus gets…
Prospective Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, currently the chairman of the House Budget Committee, brings a distinctive to-do list to the agency. And, if confirmed by the Senate, he will have tremendous independent power to get things done. While he will report to the president, heads of major agencies like HHS — with a budget of more than $1 trillion for the current fiscal year — can interpret laws in different ways than their predecessors, and rewrite regulations and guidance, which is how many important policies are actually carried out. “Virtually everything people do every day is impacted…
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