Massachusetts Making Huge Effort To Overhaul Nursing Care For The Elderly
As part of a lawsuit settlement, Massachusetts has committed $1 billion in spending for new housing and community support services so that nursing home residents can return to their communities. Separately, reports explore alternative options to nursing home care for older people who need support.
The Boston Globe:
Massachusetts Will Pay For Thousands To Leave Nursing Homes
Nursing home residents should find it dramatically easier to return to their communities after Massachusetts committed to spending $1 billion over the next eight years for new housing and community support for people seeking to leave long-term care facilities. The commitment was part of a settlement in a lawsuit filed in US District Court by the Massachusetts Senior Action Council and seven nursing home residents who wanted to return to their communities but could not find housing to accommodate them. (Laughlin, 4/21)
Stateline.org:
‘Are Nursing Homes Our Only Option?’ These Centers Offer Older Adults An Alternative
George Raines, a white-haired man in a red track suit and matching University of Alabama ball cap, cracked jokes as physical therapist Brad Ellis led him through a series of exercises designed to strengthen his legs. Raines, who is 79, pretended to be in pain, but his grin belied his tone of mock suffering. The men were in the therapy room at Ascension Living Alexian PACE in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where older clients spend the day getting medical care and other services. (Vollers, 4/19)
In other health news from across the U.S. —
The Hill:
Supreme Court To Consider Whether Cities Can Ticket Homeless People
The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments Monday over a challenge to a law letting cities fine homeless people, potentially radically changing the lives of the hundreds of thousands without homes. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that cities cannot ticket homeless people for camping in public when there were no alternative shelters available, though the municipalities backing the suit want that opinion overturned. (Robertson, 4/21)
Stateline.org:
States Want To Make It Harder For Health Insurers To Deny Care, But Firms Might Evade Enforcement
For decades, Amina Tollin struggled with mysterious, debilitating pain that radiated throughout her body. A few years ago, when a doctor finally diagnosed her with polyneuropathy, a chronic nerve condition, she had begun to use a wheelchair. The doctor prescribed a blood infusion therapy that allowed Tollin, 40, to live her life normally. That is, until about three months ago, when it came time for reapproval and Medicaid stopped paying for the therapy. (Chatlani, 4/19)
Fox News:
Planned Parenthood Refuses To Hand Over Records Of Transgender Procedures On Children
Planned Parenthood in St. Louis, Missouri is appealing a judge's ruling that required the clinic to hand over patient files exposing whether puberty blockers and transgender procedures were performed on children. The clinic filed the appeal in the 22nd Judicial Court in St. Louis on Friday, arguing that Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey's civil investigative demand was "improperly issued" because it did not reference Planned Parenthood in the 54 requests. (Joseph, 4/20)
San Francisco Chronicle:
Woman Dies At Facility Run By S.F.’s Largest Drug Treatment Provider
A woman died Thursday at a sober living facility run by HealthRight 360, San Francisco’s largest addiction treatment provider. The woman, who was in treatment at the program, is the fifth person in the past 13 months to die in a facility run by HealthRight 360. Four men in the nonprofit’s programs died of overdoses from March 2023 through February 2024. The woman’s cause of death was not immediately known Friday. (Angst, 4/19)
Stateline:
Census Change Will Lead To More Data On Health Of Middle Eastern, North African People In US
Before the successful, healthy birth of her son, recalls Germine Awad — an Egyptian American who is a psychologist at the University of Michigan — clinicians told her that her hormone levels were too high and that her pregnancy was in danger. “They don’t know us,” her mother reassured her. Iyman Hamad, a Palestinian American public health graduate student at Wayne State University in Detroit, had to search online to figure out which race or ethnicity box she should check at the doctor’s office and on school forms. (Hassanein, 4/19)
KFF Health News:
Rural Jails Turn To Community Health Workers To Help The Newly Released Succeed
Garrett Clark estimates he has spent about six years in the Sanpete County Jail, a plain concrete building perched on a dusty hill just outside this small, rural town where he grew up. He blames his addiction. He started using in middle school, and by the time he was an adult he was addicted to meth and heroin. At various points, he’s done time alongside his mom, his dad, his sister, and his younger brother. “That’s all I’ve known my whole life,” said Clark, 31, in December. (Mongeau Hughes, 4/22)
