Latest KFF Health News Stories
More Than Half Of California Nursing Homes Balk At Stricter Staffing Rules
Patient advocates say the state’s new staffing regulations are a good start toward better protecting the frail, but the nursing home industry contends they’re too burdensome.
Medicare reduce pagos a hogares cuyos pacientes vuelven a ser hospitalizados
El gobierno federal reducirá los pagos de un año a casi 11,000 hogares cuyos pacientes vuelven al hospital con demasiada frecuencia.
Medicare Cuts Payments To Nursing Homes Whose Patients Keep Ending Up In Hospital
The incentive program to discourage nursing homes from discharging patients too quickly will also give bonuses to facilities with fewer rehospitalizations.
Feds Order More Weekend Inspections Of Nursing Homes To Catch Understaffing
Medicare instructs inspectors to look for staffing inadequacies in homes that report suspiciously low numbers of registered nurses and weekend workers.
Look-Up: Medicare’s Bonuses And Penalties For Nursing Homes Near You
The federal government is issuing bonuses and penalties to skilled nursing facilities based on how often their patients are readmitted to hospitals within a month of being discharged.
Must-Reads Of The Week From Brianna Labuskes
Newsletter editor Brianna Labuskes wades through hundreds of health articles from the week so you don’t have to.
Readers And Tweeters Slice And Dice Precision Medicine, Step Therapy
Kaiser Health News gives readers a chance to comment on a recent batch of stories.
Trying To Protect Seniors, The Most Vulnerable, From Formidable Foe Florence
With Hurricane Florence predicted to slam the Southeast’s coastline Friday, health officials scramble to dodge the storm and keep older residents safe.
Assisted Living Kicks Out The Frail ’Cause ‘We Can’t Take Care Of You Any Longer’
Is there anything families can do to fight these evictions?
What exactly is sepsis, and why is it so dangerous? Who is most vulnerable? And what are the signs? KHN explains in this video.
Avoidable Sepsis Infections Send Thousands Of Seniors To Gruesome Deaths
No one tracks sepsis cases closely enough to know how often these severe infections turn fatal. But the toll — both human and financial — is enormous, finds an investigation by KHN and the Chicago Tribune.
Crear rituales para honrar a los muertos en los centros de vida asistida
Nuevos programas de ayuda abordan un problema pocas veces tratado: el dolor de amigos de residencia y personal cuando muere un adulto mayor en un centro de vida asistida.
Creating Rituals To Honor The Dead At Long-Term Care Facilities
Death and its companion, grief, are often ignored at nursing homes and assisted living centers. Yet ignoring the loss can lead to depression, staff burnout and other problems.
HHS Watchdog To Probe Enforcement Of Nursing Home Staffing Standards
The study follows a Kaiser Health News and New York Times investigation that found nearly 1,400 nursing homes have reported fewer registered nurses on duty than Medicare requires or failed to provide reliable staffing information to the government.
Mining A New Data Set To Pinpoint Critical Staffing Issues In Skilled Nursing Facilities
Low staffing is a root cause of many injuries in nursing homes. Kaiser Health News senior correspondent Jordan Rau explains how he connected the dots between manpower and risk at facilities nationwide, using a federal tool known as the Payroll-Based Journal.
1,400 Nursing Homes Get Lower Medicare Ratings Because Of Staffing Concerns
Medicare said those homes either lacked a registered nurse for “a high number of days” over three months, provided data the government couldn’t verify or didn’t supply their payroll data at all.
‘Like A Ghost Town’: Erratic Nursing Home Staffing Revealed Through New Records
Daily nursing home payroll records just released by the federal government show the number of nurses and aides dips far below average on some days and consistently plummets on weekends.
Readers And Tweeters Let Loose Over Kids Being Detained At The Border — And More
Kaiser Health News gives readers a chance to comment on a recent batch of stories.
Medicare Takes Aim At Boomerang Hospitalizations Of Nursing Home Patients
One in 5 Medicare patients who leave the hospital for a nursing home end up back in the hospital. To discourage this, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will soon give bonuses and penalties to facilities based on their rehospitalization rates.
Look-Up: Compare Nursing Homes’ Track Records On Boomerang Hospitalizations
Use this tool to see how skilled nursing homes in the U.S. performed on two metrics of quality.