Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNF)

 Aging 2.0, from very small to very big. Begun in 2012 through the efforts of Katy Fike and Stephen Johnston.  The goal: address the biggest challenges and opportunities in aging. In 2021, Aging 2.0, at that point with "40,000-plus innovators in 130 chapters across 31 countries," was acquired by the Louisville Healthcare CEO Council.  Despite denial that this acquisition was not changing the mission, it has migrated from its long-time loosely connected chapters with a few members here to a thousand there. Louisville ownership has transformed both its members and sponsorship -- senior living, skilled nursing, healthcare, insurers.  Here are five exhibitors/content from the Aging 2.0 Optimize event beginning today in Louisville:

August, so warm, so replete with nursing home doomsayers and endless scam calls.  You may be one of the dwindling population (34% are homeowners) who have landlines in the US (even digital phone-service based). You may feel like it is a waste, especially given the remarkably robust phone-scam industry populated in noisy call centers by reps who know nothing about the so-called Do Not Call list, and whose measurement must be based on getting you to pick up the phone again and again.  Your relatives only text. Even your dentist and doctor prefer text. So why keep it? Maybe you run a business and need to call clients. Maybe you are legitimately afraid of not being found by emergency services (see below).  Maybe you are an older adult living alone and just want to chat with someone.  Here are the five blog posts from August:

It's news -- 600 nursing homes closed so what’s the strategy to fix? Rant on.  You may have read a depressing article this morning in the Wall Street Journal about the number of people stuck in hospitals with no place to go because there are no nursing homes to take them – which is the status in the UK’s National Health System (NHS).  That was an embarrassment in the UK – and this is a scandal in the US. It never should not have gotten to this point. So many factors crushed nursing homes -- Covid and Private Equity nursing home ownership were big players, followed by government strategy to undermine them. For 14 years, Florida banned new nursing home construction. The federal “Money Follows the Person” was introduced in 2005 to enable seniors to avoid them and receive Medicaid-paid services. Reauthorized repeatedly, it is now authorized through 2027. 

What care delivery has seen an uptake in technology adoption? People imagined that post-Covid-19, technology would become much more compelling in all types of care delivery. And for sure, the pandemic institutionalized the role of in-home telehealth, with CMS reimbursement presumed to become permanent, or at least regularly renewed. In fact, 23% of respondents to a government survey had used telehealth during a 6-month period in 2021. Also for sure, the use of healthcare portals has seen increased penetration – in 2020, 60% of patients in the US were offered access to a portal, and 40% accessed their records through it.