Despite improvements in selected nursing facility (NF) quality measures such as reduction in antipsychotic use; local, state, and national initiatives; and regulatory incentives, the quality of clinical care delivered in this setting remains inconsistent. Herein, recommendations for overcoming barriers to ...
Vaccines are critical to protect both nursing home residents and staff from COVID-19, but some staff have expressed reservations about being vaccinated. In this brief report, we describe interventions that Genesis HealthCare—one of the largest US long-term care providers—implemented after recognizing midwa...
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) initiated the National Partnership to Improve Dementia Care in Nursing Homes in 2012, which helped decrease antipsychotics use. However, inappropriate use of antipsychotics and other psychotropic medications to control behavioral symptoms associated with dementia...
The use of antipsychotics in persons with Parkinson's disease (PD) is common, although their use may aggravate the symptoms of PD. Clozapine and quetiapine are the only antipsychotics recommended in PD treatment guidelines. Information on factors associated with initiation of antipsychotics is needed....
Last week, the House Committee on Ways & Means held a mark-up hearing on several bills to protect and expand health care for millions of seniors. The committee approved six bills that address a wide range of pressing health-care issues, particularly those facing rural communities. The package of bills ...
Nursing home (NH) employee influenza vaccination is associated with reductions in morbidity and mortality among residents. Little is known regarding associations between NH characteristics and employee influenza vaccination rates (EVRs). This study identifies NH characteristics that may be associated with ...
Hand hygiene is the single-most important nursing home (NH) infection control measure. We piloted a multifaceted hand-washing/surface cleaning intervention in 5 NHs. Our aims were to assess the feasibility of implementing this intervention by assessing staff participation, satisfaction, hand-washing compli...