Dan Frith

The corporate owners of America’s nursing homes complain loudly that they are losing money! The CEOs say that the Medicaid payments, which pay for about two-thirds of their residents, are not enough to cover operating costs. Is this claim true or false? I don’t have the answer but do find…

We all worry about the rampant infections in hospitals. The concern is heightened when surgery is involved. A common surgery with today’s aging population is the elective total hip arthroplasty – or hip replacement surgery. Should patients undergoing elective hip surgery be given antibiotics before surgery? A recent study indicates…

A former St. Louis nursing home executive will spend two months in prison and two months in a halfway house for his part in a Medicaid and Medicare fraud scheme. Charles B. Kaiser III, former president of American Healthcare Management, pleaded guilty in January to a misdemeanor charge of making…

Sadly…you read it correctly! A former aide at the Rome Memorial Hospital Residential Health Care Facility, who was convicted last month of raping and sexually assaulting a 90-year-old resident of the nursing home, has been sentenced to over 30 years in prison. The aide was an employee at Rome Memorial…

We have previously written about bedsores or decubitus ulcers or pressure sores – different terms referring to the same medical condition. Decubitus ulcers arise when a person is in a sitting or lying position for an extended period of time without shifting his or her weight. The continuous pressure against…

A Johns Hopkins University study of adult patients admitted to its hospital showed that patients who resided in nursing homes at any time within the last six months were far more likely than other adult patients to carry or be infected with a drug-resistant superbug. The study, conducted over a…

Please allow me to post this short article on a topic outside of our norm. I am a graduate of Virginia Tech, grew up in Blacksburg, and have parents living about 1 mile from the campus. One of my brothers graduated from the university as did my father. My great-grandfather…

Drugs are always in the news! There is Vioxx, and Celebrex, and the hormone-replacement drug Prempro, and the birth-control patch Ortho Evra and on and on and on. In the last few days the following articles have appeared in the media: o FDA’s Position on New Drugs May Hurt Merck’s…

Many nursing homes do not want to be held accountable for acts of negligence which kill or injure their residents. How do they escape legal responsibility? Well, did the admission agreement your dad signed (or you signed for your mother) when first admitted to the facility contain a mandatory arbitration…