Geriatrics is one of the lower-paid medical specialties, in part because virtually all its patients are on Medicare, which pays doctors less than commercial insurers. Under the Affordable Care Act, Medicare has already begun paying 10 percent bonuses in physician reimbursement for evaluation and management, but it doesn’t seem to have attracted more future geriatricians.
Read the full article at The New York Times.
The number of children in California is on the decline, the number of elderly is on the rise and fewer people are moving to the state, according to a new report that argues the state will have to rely on fewer people to prop up its economy in the future.
Read the full article at The San Francisco Chronicle.
There are more than 5 million people with Alzheimer’s in the U.S., and most are cared for at home. Now, one company has begun offering training to family caregivers to help them deal with the special challenges of caring for an Alzheimer’s patient.
Read/Listen to the full story at National Public Radio.
You can’t mistake the trend: A graying population and revised policies determining who gets priority for donated organs, have led to a rising proportion of older adults receiving transplants.
Read the full article at The New York Times.
A recent poll from Pew Research Center of Millennials and Boomers showed that a majority of each group felt a responsibility to care for family members of the other. If you need it spelled out, here are four reasons why the entitled Millennial/helicopter Boomer dynamic is unlikely to change anytime soon.
Read the full article at Forbes.
By some estimates, nearly 40 percent of Koreans will be 65 years old or older by midcentury. In a sense, the country is suffering from its rapid development, which has been accompanied by soaring life expectancy and plummeting birth rates.
Read/Listen to the full story at National Public Radio.
Starting at about age 40, people tend to lose about four-tenths of an inch of height every decade, said Dr. David B. Reuben, chief of geriatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at U.C.L.A. Some of the height loss occurs as part of the normal aging process, and some because of disease. Our old friend gravity, bane of the first vertical height measurement, also plays a role. “It’s a Newton thing,” said Dr. Reuben, a member of the American Geriatrics Society.
Read the full article at The New York Times.
A study in the journal Health Affairs recently pointed out that hospices themselves may be turning away patients because of certain restrictive enrollment policies. It’s possible, too, that physicians who know of these policies aren’t referring patients whom the doctors fear wouldn’t qualify.
Read the full article at The New York Times.
Growth in the number of Americans ages 65 to 74 is due to peak this year and slow for most of the next quarter-century, according to estimates by the Census Bureau. Within a decade, the 75-and-up age bracket will increase at a faster pace.
Read the full article at Bloomberg.