aging - Bill of Health

Long-Term Care After COVID: A Roadmap for Law Reform

June 2, 2021June 2, 2021 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Nina A. Kohn

Between May 2020 and January 2021, 94 percent of U.S. nursing homes experienced at least one COVID-19 outbreak. And nursing home residents — isolated from family and friends, dependent on staff often tasked with providing care to far more residents than feasible, and sometimes crowded into rooms with three or more people — succumbed the virus at record rates. By March 2021, nursing home residents accounted for a quarter of all U.S. COVID-19-related deaths.

The poor conditions in nursing homes that have been exposed by the pandemic are symptomatic of long-standing problems in the industry.

Fortunately, as I discuss in-depth in a new essay in the Georgetown Law Journal Online, there are a series of practical reforms that could readily improve the quality of nursing home care, in large part by changing the incentives for nursing home providers.

Senior citizen woman in wheelchair in a nursing home.

COVID-19 and Dementia Care: Lessons for the Future

June 1, 2021May 25, 2021 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Marie Clouqueur, Brent P. Forester, and Ipsit V. Vahia

Alongside the COVID-19 epidemic in the U.S., the country faces another public health epidemic: dementia, and particularly Alzheimer’s disease.

Currently one in nine older adults in the U.S. — 6.2 million — have Alzheimer’s disease. The number of adults with Alzheimer’s in the U.S. will increase rapidly as the Baby Boomers age — it is expected to double by 2050.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the situation. Acute, surging demand for dementia care services will turn into a persistent problem if we do not increase our capacity for services and better support our frontline workers. We have a chance now to reflect and take action to prepare for what is coming.

Home innovation technology concept illustration.

Call for Abstracts — 2022 Petrie-Flom Center Annual Conference: Diagnosing in the Home

May 25, 2021May 24, 2021 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Contribute to the 2022 Petrie-Flom Center Annual Conference and subsequent book project!

Through October 14, 2021, the Petrie-Flom Center is accepting abstracts for its annual conference. The 2022 annual conference will focus on ethical, legal, and regulatory challenges and opportunities around at home digital health technology.

This conference will engage with the vision for a 21^st century health care system that embraces the potential of at home digital products to support diagnoses, improve care, encourage caregivers, maximize pandemic resilience, and allow individuals to stay within the home when preferable. The goals of this conference and subsequent book project are to consider the ethical, sociological, regulatory, and legal challenges and opportunities presented by the implementation of digital products that support clinical diagnosis and/or treatment in patients’ homes over the next decade.

Interested in submitting an abstract, but want to know more about what we’re looking for? Read through the following frequently asked questions.

Worsening Health Inequity During Pandemic for People Experiencing Homelessness

April 28, 2021April 27, 2021 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

This piece was adapted from a post that originally ran at On the Flying Bridge on March 28, 2021.

By Michael Greeley

With great fanfare last week, DoorDash announced an initiative to provide same-day home delivery of approved COVID-19 test collection kits.

Much of the business model innovation in health care today is to move as much care as is feasible to the home. But what does that mean for the homeless?

Woman helping man in wheelchair at home.

Family Caregivers’ Critical, Overlooked Role in Our Health Care Workforce

April 12, 2021April 9, 2021 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Judith Iwanski and Laurance Stuntz

Family caregivers hold a critical role in the health care system and the overall U.S. economy, but do not receive adequate support and recognition for these contributions.

These interrelated phenomena have been brought to the fore by the COVID-19 pandemic.

ANDOVER,HAMPSHIRE/UNITED KINGDOM-NOVEMBER 6 2019:A district nurse visits a ninety-four year old patient at his home to treat for pulmonary edema and head/brain injury.

Challenges Facing Home Health Caregivers During COVID-19 Pandemic

April 7, 2021April 6, 2021 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Vicki Hoak

The pandemic has emphasized the value of home health caregivers. Their contribution has been overshadowed for decades, but now it is very clear how important their work is to the well-being of older Americans, people with disabilities, and medically-fragile children.

As families were urged to stay at home to stop the spread of COVID-19, home care agencies and their staff became all the more important for preventing the spread of COVID-19 and protecting the most vulnerable from the disease. Home health aides offer clients one-to-one care and continual monitoring of changes in conditions — all in the safety of one’s own home.

Telehealth and the Future of Long-Term Care

April 6, 2021April 6, 2021 Tara Sklar Leave a comment

Join us on Wednesday, April 7 for further discussion of these issues during our virtual event, “Triumphs & Tensions of the Telehealth Boom.“

By Tara Sklar

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the trend away from providing health care and long-term care in institutional settings in ways not previously imagined; the result of a reckoning with the massacre that disproportionately killed hundreds of thousands of older adults living in nursing homes or similar congregate facilities, along with the staff who cared for them.

Beyond the immediate staffing and infection control issues at hand, this juncture leads to a larger question, in the U.S. and abroad: how can we best care for an older population in the decades — and not just years — ahead?

The major advances and shortfalls that have surfaced during the pandemic around telehealth and its related technologies in digital home health care are essential to this discussion.

Seniors’ Perspectives on Dementia and Decision-Making

December 15, 2020December 14, 2020 James Toomey Leave a comment

By James Toomey

In order to make a decision recognized in law — to enter into or enforce a contract, buy or sell property, or get married or divorced — an individual must have the mental capacity the law requires for the decision. As people, especially older adults, develop dementia, their decision-making abilities are increasingly compromised, and the law begins to find that they lack capacity for particular decisions.

The standards governing capacity determinations, however, are notorious for being vague, inconsistently applied, and excessively curtailing the rights of those with dementia. Part of the problem, I think, is the lack of an agreed-upon normative theory for when in the course of dementia the law ought to intervene in individual decision-making. That is why, here on Bill of Health, I’ve previously called for understanding the perspectives of seniors — the population affected by the doctrine of capacity most closely and most often — on this normative question.

In my recent publication “Understanding the Perspectives of Seniors on Dementia and Decision-Making” in AJOB Empirical Bioethics, I’ve begun to do so, reporting the results of an empirical study that I conducted with the Petrie-Flom Student Fellowship in the 2018-19 academic year. The study, which involved an online survey of and interviews with older adults, revealed a heterogeneity of ways of thinking about the problem, supporting a flexible legal doctrine that would assist people in making their own choices. Notwithstanding the diversity, however, the data reveal several conclusions and tensions of interest to academics and healthcare and legal practitioners.

Taking Control During COVID-19 Through Advance Care Planning

July 21, 2020July 20, 2020 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Stephanie Anderson and Carole Montgomery

A deep divide exists in the American health care system between patients’ values and the care they receive.

Let’s start with a story – Marcus was in his mid-40’s when he underwent high-risk heart surgery during which he suffered a brain injury. Afterward, the surgeons at first reassured his family that the surgery itself was successful (his heart was working fine) in spite of his brain injury.

Unfortunately, after many days in the ICU he remained unconscious and was not able to get off the ventilator. Specialists told the family that his brain injury was severe, and he would likely not be able to carry on a meaningful conversation or live independently ever again.

A Physician Reflects on COVID-19 and Advance Care Planning

July 7, 2020July 7, 2020 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Shoshana Ungerleider

It was the end of a 24 hour shift in the ICU when the 85-year-old woman I had just admitted with end stage heart failure began having trouble breathing. While I knew she did not desire “aggressive measures” taken to prolong her life, I wondered what that meant in the context of this moment. Even though I was a young medical resident, I knew without swift intervention, she would not be able to survive the night. I ran into the waiting room to search for her son, her medical decision maker, but he had gone home for the night.

I returned to the bedside to see that my patient was tiring as her breathing was becoming shallow and fast. She was awake and I sat down to explain why she was feeling breathless. I explained that her condition had rapidly worsened and asked if she had ever considered a scenario where she may need a breathing tube. She had not. As her oxygen levels dropped, it quickly became clear that we had to act. What wasn’t clear to me was whether this frail woman would actually survive this hospital stay, and if she truly understood what intubation and mechanical ventilation were and whether this would cause her to suffer.

Category: aging