May 29, 2016

Sense, Common Sense, and Nonsense

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Massachusetts has a problem with nursing home quality. A recent report by the Boston Globe found that a number of the state’s for-profit n...
May 16, 2016

You Get What You Pay For—Or Do You?

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The Affordable Care Act, as it turns out, isn’t just about providing health insurance coverage for the 40 million previously uninsured Amer...
May 09, 2016

Beyond Doctoring

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I’ve long been amazed by the legerdemain that went into deciding what Medicare will cover and what it won’t. I’m not talking about decision...
April 28, 2016

How Much Help Does a Helper Need for a Helper to Give Help?

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For some time, I’ve been insisting that the exclusive focus on patients and doctors in our discussions of “shared decision-making” is mispl...
April 25, 2016

Where's the "Assist" in "Assisted Living?"

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Assisted living (AL) exists for one very simple reason: most older people don’t want to live in a nursing home. They want privacy and auton...
April 18, 2016

If it's Good for Wisconsin...

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The big news in palliative care circles this week was the results of the PerryUndem Research poll that surveyed physicians on their views ...
April 11, 2016

Ready, Aim, Fire

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Firearms are a geriatric issue. The reason: suicide is more common in older people than in the general population and guns are the method o...
April 04, 2016

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The most interesting article I came upon this past week dealing with an issue of great importance to older people wasn’t in JAMA or the Ne...
March 28, 2016

Make No Bones About It

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For some time, I’ve tried to find an up-to-date list of the medications most commonly prescribed to older people. Sounds like a simple ques...
March 14, 2016

Pay to Plan

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When Medicare began allowing payment to physicians for advance care planning on January 1, bloggers and editorialists and columnists all co...