Geriatrics: An Endangered Specialty
On December 1, 2010, Medicare payments will be slashed by more than 21%, a cut that will severely impact physicians who practice geriatric medicine. The result will be devastating to the 43 million American seniors who receive Medicare coverage, sharply limiting access to care in an environment that is already facing a deficit in geriatric practitioners. A report published by the Institute of Medicine in …Read More
Geriatrics by Legislation: The Trend of the Future?
Recently Governor Paterson signed a law that mandates New York doctors to offer balanced information on choices for end-of-life care – a step in line with principles of geriatric practice and informed decision making. All nursing homes are already mandated by regulation to perform assessments for such medical problems as delirium, depression, and pressure ulcers – assessments that will become more detailed and comprehensive on …Read More
Aging and Invisibility
My aging related art was recently covered in a post written by Paula Span in the New York Times blog, The New Old Age. It was gratifying to spend time with this outstanding journalist and share my images, many of which are finally being shown after years of storage. I was touched by some of the comments that readers wrote in response to the blog …Read More
Geriatrics, Humanistic Medicine, & Art
I recently served as keynote speaker at the American Medical Directors Association annual meeting in Long Beach, California. The reason AMDA picked me was my photos of aging, which you can view on my online portfolio. The title of my talk was Geriatrics, Humanistic Medicine, & Art, and the goal was to weave together themes of art and medicine to draw conclusions as to how …Read More
Geriatric Patients are Different
In 1981 I was an Internal Medicine intern rotating through a community hospital in New Jersey. My job was to carry out the day-to-day patient care under the direction of the private docs. I will never forget the first experience that showed me that geriatric patients are different, and helped me decide to pursue the specialty of geriatrics. Sadie (not her real name) was a …Read More
How Much do Medical Residents Know about Pressure Ulcers?
The Answer: Not as much as nurses!! This past weekend I presented a new study on how much medical residents know about pressure ulcers at the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) Annual Scientific Meeting in Orlando, FL. In our research we tested medical doctors in residency training at a major New York City hospital. For those of us who do wound care on a day-to-day basis, our results …Read More
Pressure Ulcer Prevention Lacking in High Risk Patients
A major study published in The Gerontologist has shown that pressure ulcer prevention measures are lacking in high risk patients. A research group based in the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine studied elderly patients with hip fractures, following them across care settings that included hospitals, rehabilitation facilities, and nursing homes and found inadequate use of pressure-redistributing …Read More
High-Tech Devices for Older Patients: Lots of Money for Questionable Gain
A substantial multi-billion dollar industry in implantable cardiac devices has emerged in recent years. Technologies such as cardiac defibrillators (ICDs) and cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) devices are being implanted in many people who may not need them, and one of the biggest markets is the elderly. A recent paper published in the Archives of Internal Medicine underscored the fact that although nearly 20% of the devices …Read More
Ping Pong, Aging, and the Disuse Syndrome
On a trip to Australia this past November I had the opportunity to visit with and photograph the oldest professional ping pong player in the world. 98 year old Dorothy DeLow lives in a well kept home nestled in a suburb of Sydney. She demonstrated her ability to keep a ball in the air and in doing so exhibited the hand-eye coordination of a 25 year old. …Read More
How Will Health Care Reform Affect Geriatrics?
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (HR 3590) purports to contain provisions that will provide for better care for America’s seniors and add stimulus to growth of the field of Geriatrics. One wonders, however, whether this historic bill will have true impact in stemming the flow of medical doctors away from caring for the elderly. In fact, some basic flaws in our healthcare system …Read More
