Literature Review

Chatty robot helps seniors fight loneliness through AI companionshipAssociated Press/Washington Post, 12/22/23Coral Springs, FL—Joyce Loaiza lives alone, but when she returns to her apartment at a Florida senior community, the retired office worker often has a chat with a friendly female voice that asks about her day. A few miles away, the same voice comforted 83-year-old Deanna Dezern when her friend died. In central New York, it plays games and music for 92-year-old Marie Broadbent, who is blind and in hospice, and in Washington state, it helps 83-year-old Jan Worrell make new friends. The women are some of the first in the country to receive the robot ElliQ, whose creators, Intuition Robotics, and senior assistance officials say is the only device using artificial intelligence specifically designed to alleviate the loneliness and isolation experienced by many older Americans. “It’s entertaining. You can actually talk to her,” said Loaiza, 81, whose ElliQ in suburban Fort Lauderdale nicknamed her “Jellybean” for no particular reason.

Healthcare organizations hiring, retaining more employees—FitchModern HealthcareDecember 20, 2023Hospital employment numbers have increased, while healthcare job openings are on the decline—though the industry is still recovering from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. About 17.2 million individuals were on the payroll at healthcare organizations in November 2023, compared with 16.6 million in December 2022, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

Dauphin County senior living facility announces closure; approx. 40 residents affectedWHTM-TV (Harrisburg, PA)December 18, 2023Harrisburg, PA—A local senior care facility that is located in Harrisburg recently announced that it will be closing its doors. 

Washington Post Investigation on Elopements Puts Memory Care in the SpotlightSenior Housing NewsDecember 20, 2023A series of investigations from the Washington Post on resident elopement and staffing has shone a new light on memory care operators and the challenges they face keeping residents safe. One of the Post stories, published over the weekend, centered on residents who wandered away from memory care communities since 2018, almost 100 of which died. Most of the incidents involved residents of memory care communities, and among the struggles highlighted were staffing shortages and improper training. The story represents a new source of scrutiny for an industry that has intermittently struggled with bad press since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Berkshire VNA Nurses and Healthcare Professionals Reach Tentative Agreement on First MNA Contract to Stabilize Staffing and Improve Patient CarePRNewswireDecember 18, 2023Pittsfield, MA—The nurses and healthcare professionals of the Berkshire Visiting Nurse Association, represented by the Massachusetts Nurses Association, reached a tentative agreement on December 15 with Berkshire Health Systems, agreeing on contract terms that give BVNA clinicians a wage step scale and tackle some productivity issues to help with recruitment and retention and address patient care access problems. 

Study uncovers racial, geographic disparities in LTSS accessMcKnight’s Home Care DailyDecember 19, 2023Disparities in access to long-term services and supports (LTSS) create greater financial and health-related challenges for people of color, according to new research by healthcare research firm ATI Advisory. Using data from a University of Michigan Health and Retirement Study, the ATI study sampled 6,232 people aged 55 years old and living in home- or community-based settings. 

The Language of Hospice Can Help Us Get Better at Discussing DeathTIMEDecember 18, 2023Just because death is inevitable doesn’t make it easy or natural to talk about. In a new study, researchers wondered if hospice workers—experts in end-of-life care—had lessons to teach the rest of us when it came to speaking with patients and families about death. Daniel Menchik, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Arizona who studies the use of language in different fields of medicine, spent eight months sitting in on team meetings at a hospice care facility that were also open to patients’ families. ... In the study, Menchik noticed that hospice workers used three different types of verbs in meetings with family members: predictive, subjunctive, and imperative. Predictive verbs are used to assert things about the future and include words like “will” and “going to.” Imperative verbs carry a similar firmness, but include a call to action; the most common one Menchik encounters in medical settings is “should.” Subjunctive verbs convey some sort of personal stance when talking about the future. “Think,” “feel,” “want,” and many other expressive phrases fall in this category. When a family starts hospice care, “their capabilities to engage in intense conversations [about death] are usually pretty limited,” Menchik says. But he believes that hospice workers help bridge that gap by minimizing their use of imperative verbs. In meetings he observed, imperative verbs made up just 17% of the verb phrases used by hospice professionals. That’s fairly uncommon in medicine. Editor's Note: Use this article to examine the language used in your team meetings; to strengthen your orientation of employees from non-hospice settings; to engage your admissions nurses in a lively dialogue about its applicability to their experiences with patients and families.

Staffing issues continue to drive reduced admissions in SNFsMcKnight’s Senior LivingDecember 18, 2023Nursing home providers continue to struggle with staffing challenges as they aim to reboot admissions in the post-pandemic era, according to the newly released results of a recent Ziegler CFO Hotline survey. “The demand for our SNF services is rising at a rate significantly higher than our labor force allows,” said one respondent. ... Forty-six percent of the respondents to the November survey indicated that staffing issues have forced a reduction in SNF admissions. 

Senior homes left dangerously understaffed amid assisted-living boomWashington PostDecember 17, 2023Louisville, CO—Lavender Farms, an upscale assisted-living facility in the Boulder suburbs, promised “24/7 on-site care” in its marketing materials. But managers at its operating company, Balfour Senior Living, worried deeply about their ability to care for the elderly residents who roamed the farmhouse-chic corridors at odd hours and sometimes wandered outside unnoticed, documents and interviews show. ... Failures at Balfour facilities are symptoms of deeper problems in the $34 billion market for assisted living and memory care, a growing industry that now provides care and housing for more than a million Americans, according to industry estimates.

Big Medicare Changes Coming in 2024AARP, 12/14/23By Dena BunisThe new year rings in more Rx drug savings, higher Part B premiums and new Advantage rules.

Lawmakers bring PACE expansion bill back into playMcKnight’s Home Care DailyDecember 15, 2023Two members of Congress reintroduced a bill that would strengthen and expand the Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly. Reps. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) and John Moolenaar (R-MI) introduced the PACE Expanded Act on Dec. 5. The sweeping legislation, if passed, would promote the expansion of existing PACE programs, make it easier to establish new programs, make PACE more affordable for Medicare beneficiaries and create a pilot program for testing the PACE model within new populations. 

Greener nurses enter field as workforce demand continues to spikeMcKnight’s Home Care DailyDecember 15, 2023Job openings in healthcare and social services have risen sharply in the last several years, and healthcare providers are taking on less-experienced registered nurses to handle the pressure. At the beginning of 2018, the average nurse’s tenure was more than six years of experience, according to a recent workforce report by the ADP Research Institute. In the five years since, however, high turnover rates and a corresponding abundance of job opportunities deflated a nurse’s average tenure to about five years of experience.