Two weeks into my summer internship here at the John A. Hartford Foundation, my supervisor Chris asked me this deceptively hard-to-answer question. As I mulled over this question during lunch, I realized that while my knowledge about the care of older adults had increased exponentially and I was now aware…
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Right now, as we stand on the brink of health care reform, we are locked in a battle to increase the number of health care professionals trained in geriatrics. What would victory look like? To me, victory would be major increases in the number of geriatricians, geriatric nurse practitioners, and…
Read full postMost likely, unless you are actively avoiding all media, you have heard about the baffling “death panel” non-debate surrounding health care reform. Somehow, some conservative pundits extrapolated a provision proposing that Medicare reimburse doctors for talking with patients about end of life care to mean that the government would be…
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Medicare spending is moving toward a plethora of higher reimbursement for in-office procedures and tests and away from what is most important and cost-effective for the health of older adults: good geriatric care. I recently attended Academy Health’s annual research meeting in Chicago where the nation’s top health services researchers…
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As part of its theory of change, the Foundation has made big bets on the specialty of geriatric medicine. (Click here for a nice summary of what geriatricians do.) Unfortunately, we are losing the numbers game. Geriatric medicine is the only specialty in which a physician takes a pay cut…
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One of the ways I think the field of geriatrics has failed is in articulating its value proposition to the consumer. If we want to spread competence in geriatric care throughout the health professions, at the end of the day there has to be a demand (not a need that…
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Last week I discussed public policy progress since the IOM’s Retooling for an Aging America report came out on April 14, 2008. I wish I could say that medical education has been revamped in response to the report, but that is wishful thinking. Given that the bulk of the Foundation’s…
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As many of us know, last April the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released a report called Retooling for an Aging America: Building the Health Care Workforce. Because we helped commission it, we were of course very relieved when the report came out with strong recommendations for enhancing the geriatric competence…
Read full postOn July 15, at Macomb Community College (Warren, Michigan), President Barack Obama offered a new plan to commit $12 billion in federal funds to community college education across the nation. The plan, called The American Graduation Initiative, would provide funding to help these schools establish partnerships with businesses, coordinate their…
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On June 12, 2009, I--along with over 200 others--attended a forum hosted by the Health Affairs journal and the AARP/Robert Wood Johnson Center to Champion Nursing in America. The forum, “Nursing Workforce Solutions for the 21st Century Health Care: How Do We Get There?” celebrated the recent collection of…
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