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“Mild cognitive impairment is also a recognized risk factor for increasing dementia. Seniors with the condition develop Alzheimer’s disease at much higher rates than those of the same age with sharper memories.”

Gretchen Reynold’s New York Time’s article, Getting a Brain Boost Through Exercise, explains that women who had exercised, either by walking or weight training, performed better on almost all of the cognitive tests after six months than they had before. Studies are being done on women who had been found to have mild cognitive impairment, a condition that makes a person’s memory and thinking more muddled than would be expected at a given age, to show that exercise can help improve this condition. 

But the women who had exercised, either by walking or weight training, performed better on almost all of the cognitive tests after six months than they had before. While both exercise groups improved almost equally on tests of spatial memory, the women who had walked showed greater gains in verbal memory than the women who had lifted weights. So get out there and start exercising! It is not only good for your body, but for your brain health, too! 

Most people wouldn’t think to ask if a hospital admission is actually an admission – and it turns out that for some patients, especially the elderly and those receiving Medicare benefits, it can be a multi-thousand dollar question. Check out this link to KevinMD’s article, “How Observation Admissions affect Medicare Patients” to learn about a troubling situation that is ocurring more and more frequently as hospitals mark patients as ‘observation only’ admissions – often leaving the patient with an additional 20% co-pay and a bill for the the full price of any services rendered after discharge.

Family Support Group Meeting for Adult Children of Aging Parents 

For those of you who are adult children of aging parents supporting them through this enriching transition into the elder years,  we would like to extend a warm invitation for you to join us for our Family Support Group.

Meetings will be held on the first Thursday of every month, between 5:30 and 7:00 pm. This coming week, the meeting will take place on Thursday, October 4th. Enjoy refreshments (provided by Croissant Gourmet) and constructive support and encouragement led by our very own Cathy Dunlap, MSW.

Located at:

119 East Morse Blvd

Winter Park, FL

Call (407) 896 – 2010 to RSVP or for further questions.

Hope to see you there!

 President and owner of The Cameron Group, a Geriatric Care Management company based in Orlando, FL, Amy Cameron O’Rourke discusses how and why she chose a career in elder care – the feeling of love, care, gratitude, and appreciation for the work she does with elderly people.

About 200 advocates for the elderly and the poor jammed a public hearing in Orlando on Thursday to voice concerns about Florida’s proposed Medicaid overhaul –echoing the same reaction seen at public hearings throughout the state.

Although representatives from several HMOs offered examples of how they have coordinated care for patients and saved lives, most of the people at the hearing criticized the state’s plans to move most Medicaid recipients into managed-care plans.

“Managed care works if you’re well. It does not work if you have complex health problems,” said Amy O’Rourke of the Cameron Group, a professional geriatric-care management company based in Orlando. “I have 13,000 elders, and I have not seen one managed-care program work for elders with complex care.”

Thursday’s hearing was the 10^th in a series of 11 public hearings organized by the Agency for Health Care Administration during the past week. The state agency is gathering comments from Medicaid consumers, families and others about the state’s Medicaid proposal before submitting the plan to the federal government.

The public comments are to be forwarded to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where officials must approve Florida’s proposed changes because they require a waiver of federal Medicaid rules. State agency officials said they plan to turn in the waiver request Aug. 1

In Orlando, advocates for the poor also warned that the state has based its Medicaid makeover on a five-year pilot project that was riddled with problems.

The new Medicaid managed-care program “will be built on the incredibly shaky foundation of the reform pilot of the last five years,” said Greg Mellowe of Florida CHAIN, a statewide advocacy organization focused on health-care issues. “You can imagine the uproar that would occur of a pharmaceutical company began selling a new medication without bothering to finish the trials. That’s what is happening here.”

Throughout the state, the hearings have been magnets for critics of the new plan. In West Palm Beach, more than 200 people packed an auditorium, where elder-law attorneys warned that the new Medicaid program would reward managed-care companies for moving senior citizens out of nursing-home care

And at a public hearing in Fort Lauderdale, Broward County Medicaid patients begged state health officials Thursday not to expand the managed-care program they say failed miserably in their county and prevented them from getting medications and doctor appointments, The Associated Press reported.

Yet Robinson Johnson, a registered nurse and certified case manager for Wellcare, told the Orlando audience how she coordinated care for patients and sometimes persuaded managers to make exceptions to get her HMO patients specialized care. “I haven’t ever heard, ‘We can’t do that,’ ” she said. “There’s another face to managed care: It’s people like me who really, really care about the [patient].”

Linda Solash-Reed, an attorney affiliated with the Florida Academy of Elder Law Attorneys, criticized the new law because she said no data prove it would save money. Worse, she said, the state has no evidence that the new program would work for senior citizens because they were not included in the original pilot project.

“No data, wrong data and bad data spells disaster for Florida taxpayers,” Solash-Reed said.

If approved, the state’s Medicaid managed-care program would be phased in, but the first group to be moved into managed care would be seniors in long-term care. The long-term care program would be fully implemented by October 2013, while the managed care for other Medicaid beneficiaries is scheduled to be fully implemented by October 2014, according to the state agency.

Although Sen. Joe Negron, one of the architects of the state’s Medicaid makeover, on Wednesday urged tea-party members to show up and express their support for the plan, it did not appear tea-party proponents attended the Orlando hearing. Negron has defended the Medicaid plan, saying that charges of “grant dumping” are scare tactics.

The public can also submit written comments by email to cynthis.mann@cms.hhs.gov or FLMedicaidManagedCare@ahca.myflorida.com, or letters can be sent to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Center for Medicaid and State Operations, 7500 Security Blvd., Mail Stop S2-01-16, Baltimore, MD 21244-1850

What do think about the idea of making a tradidtiontional nursing home a place looks nothing like a nursing home, a place where residents feel little reason to leave? Toni Davis, director of the Green Hill Retirement Community in West Orange, N.J., along with two dozen other nursing home directors, are trying to build this idea. They have been remodeling their traditional nursing homes with new floor plan, added fixures, and a whole new care plan system.  They want to bring the comfort, the home-like feeling to senior residents; and they are very  successful.

We came across this interested article and would like to share.

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