


60 Seconds with Steve Monroe: A Win For Providers
We all know that the Life Care Centers of America nursing home in Kirkland, Washington was the location of the first major SNF outbreak of COVID at the beginning of the pandemic. Well, the families of two residents who died sued the facility, the management company and some employees for negligence. As I have stated too many times, this early in the pandemic no one really knew what was going on, no one understood the severity, and no one knew what to do with the early cases, if they even had test kits, and to be held liable for deaths in those early weeks did not seem to make sense. While the jury found that the company was not at fault for the deaths of the two women, the jury found... Read More »
60 Seconds with Swett: The Keys to Retirement Success
Last week, a partnership between Age Wave and Edward Jones conducted a survey with The Harris Poll, getting more than 12,000 respondents, the majority of which were retirees and pre-retirees, to answer questions on the keys to success in retirement. With Edward Jones as one of the initiators of the survey, being a major financial advisory firm, you could bet that one of the main takeaways was going to be the importance of financial preparedness for retirees. Indeed, the report revealed that six in 10 Americans who plan to retire believe they can afford a comfortable and secure retirement lasting more than 10 years. To that we would just say what about the other 40%, a significant portion... Read More »
60 Seconds with Swett: An End to the Public Health Emergency
After more than three years in effect, the federal COVID-19 public health emergency ended on May 11. That seems like a moment worth celebrating, after the upheaval the country has experienced since the beginning of the pandemic. The vast majority of Americans wouldn’t have noticed the switch, since life has been pretty much back to normal for over a year now. But health care facilities will feel the change. Although states and localities may have different rules, staff vaccine mandates that caused a lot of consternation and even reached the Supreme Court will end at nursing homes, thereby hopefully relieving some of the staffing stresses on facilities. Continuous enrollment policies... Read More »
60 Seconds with Steve Monroe: Out of Touch With SNF Reality
Is the Biden Administration so out of touch with reality that they would actually shove a mandate down the throats of providers to require additional staffing in our nation’s nursing homes? Don’t answer that. Although we have heard that they are “talking” with the industry about how and what to do, let’s hope it is more frequently than they have talked with Republicans about the debt ceiling problem. Some sort of pronouncement on the staffing mandate is now expected in June, but it would be better to wait and have a workable way to move forward than to set the industry up for failure. Unfortunately, there are too many people who would like to see the entire industry go out of... Read More »