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Evelyn Berezin in 1976 at the Long Island office of her company Redactron. She developed one of the earliest word processors and helped usher in a technological revolution. Evelyn Berezin said her word processor would help secretaries become more efficient at their jobs. Photo By Barton Silverman/New York Times.

Evelyn Berezin, “Godmother of the Word Processor!” The Woman That Made Bill Gates and Steve Jobs Possible

Evelyn Berezin (1925-2018) was born in the Bronx to poor Russian-Jewish immigrants. Growing up, she loved reading science fiction and wished to study physics. She excelled at school and graduated two years early. Berezin had to wear make-up and fake her age to get a job at a research lab. She ended up studying economics because it was a more “fitting” subject for women at the time. During World War II, she finally received a scholarship to study physics at New York University. Berezin studied at night, while working full time at the International Printing Company during the day. She continued doing graduate work at New York University, with a fellowship from the US Atomic Energy Commission. In 1951, she joined the Electronic Computer Corporation, designing some of the world’s very first computers. At the time, computers were massive machines that could only do several specific functions.

Evelyn Berezin, “Godmother of the Word Processor.” Born: April 12, 1925, The Bronx, New York City, NY — Died: December 8, 2018, ArchCare at Mary Manning Walsh Nursing Home & Rehabilitation Center, New York, NY

Berezin headed the Logic Design Department, and came up with a computer to manage the distribution of magazines, and to calculate firing distances for US Army artillery. In 1957, Berezin transferred to work at Teleregister, where she designed the first banking computer and the first computerized airline reservation system (linking computers in 60 cities, and never failing once in the 11 years that it ran). Her most famous feat was in 1968 when she created the world’s first personal word processor to ease the plight of secretaries (then making up 6% of the workforce).

“Without Ms. Berezin There Would Be No Bill Gates, No Steve Jobs, No Internet, No Word Processors, No Spreadsheets; Nothing That Remotely Connects Business With The 21st Century.” — The Times of Israel (12 December 2018)

The following year, she founded her own company, Redactron Corporation, and built a mini-fridge-sized word processor, the “Data Secretary”, with a keyboard and printer, cassette tapes for memory storage, and no screen. With the ability to go back and edit text, cut and paste, and print multiple copies at once, Berezin’s computer freed the world “from the shackles of the typewriter”. The machine was an in instant hit, selling thousands of units around the world. Berezin’s word processor not only set the stage for future word processing software, like Microsoft Word, but for compact personal computers in general. It is credited with being the world’s first office computer. Not surprisingly, it has been said that without Evelyn Berezin “there would have been no Bill Gates, and no Steve Jobs”.

Evelyn Berezin Pioneered Word Processors and Butted Heads With Men! A ‘loud woman,’ she studied physics and found that to get to the top she had to start her own company. Evelyn Berezin later became a mentor to entrepreneurs, venture capitalist and director of companies. Photo: Berezin Family. Wall Street Journal

“Why Is This Woman Not Famous?” British Writer Gwyn Headley Wrote In A 2010 Blog Post. — The Times of Israel

Redactron grew to a public company with over 500 employees. As president, she was the only woman heading a corporation in the US at the time, and was described as the “Most Senior Businesswoman in the United States”. Redactron was eventually bought out by Burroughs Corporation, where Berezin worked for several more years. In 1980, she moved on to head a venture capital group investing in new technologies. Berezin served on the boards of a number of organizations, including Stony Brook University and the Brookhaven National Laboratory, and was a sought-after consultant for the world’s biggest tech companies.

She was a key part of the American Women’s Economic Development Corporation for 25 years, training thousands of women in how to start businesses of their own, with a success rate of over 60%. In honour of her parents, she established the Sam and Rose Berezin Endowed Scholarship, paying tuition in full for an undergraduate science student each year. Sadly, Berezin passed away earlier this month. She left her estate to fund a new professorship or research centre at Stony Brook University. Berezin won multiple awards and honourary degrees, and was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame.

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Careers | ArchCare | Quality Utilization Review Nurse in New York, New York | Careers at Archcare Senior Life Skip Branding Skip to main content Provider Request

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An X-ray technician, 44, allegedly sexually abused Alzheimer patient, 81, using lubricant in a nursing home

An X-ray technician, 44, allegedly sexually abused Alzheimer patient, 81, using lubricant in a nursing home

An X-ray technician has been accused of attacking an 81 year old nursing home patient. Guy Negoue, 44, was arrested shortly after the incident in August 2020 at ArchCare Terence Cardinal Cooke Nursing Home on Fifth Ave. near E. 106th St., across from Central Park in East Harlem, court records released this week reveal. He is accused of attacking the fragile woman at a Catholic Church-run…

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Federal Help Falters As Nursing Homes Run Short Of Protective Equipment

Around the country, nursing homes trying to protect their residents from the coronavirus eagerly await boxes of masks, eyewear and gowns promised by the federal government. But all too often the packages deliver disappointment — if they arrive at all.

Some contain flimsy surgical masks or cloth face coverings that are explicitly not intended for medical use. Others are missing items or have far less than the full week’s worth of protective equipment the government promised to send. Instead of proper medical gowns, many packages hold large blue plastic ponchos.

“It’s like putting a trash bag on,” said Pamela Black, the administrator of Enterprise Estates Nursing Center in Enterprise, Kansas. “There’s no real place for your hands to come out.”

As nursing homes remain the pandemic’s epicenter, the federal government is failing to ensure they have all the personal protective equipment, or PPE, needed to prevent the spread of the virus, according to interviews with administrators and federal data.

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Despite President Donald Trump’s pledge April 30 to “deploy every resource and power that we have” to protect older Americans, a fifth of the nation’s nursing homes — 3,213 out of more than 15,000 — reported during the last two weeks of May that they had less than a week’s supply of masks, gowns, gloves, eye protectors or hand sanitizer, according to federal records. Of those, 946 reported they had at least one confirmed COVID infection since the pandemic began.

“The federal government’s failure to nationalize the supply chain and take control of it contributed to the deaths in nursing homes,” said Scott LaRue, president and CEO of ArchCare, the health care system of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, which operates five nursing homes.

Widespread equipment shortages continue in some places as the virus rages lethally through nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. More than 217,000 short-term patients and long-term residents in nursing homes have contracted COVID-19, and 43,000 have died.

Some homes still have not received the first of two batches of supplies the Federal Emergency Management Agency said it would ship in May. Instead, some got only cloth masks that the Department of Health and Human Services commissioned through a contract with HanesBrands, the apparel company known for its underwear. An HHS webpage says the masks are not intended for caring for contagious patients but can be given to workers for their commutes or to residents when they leave their rooms.

As homes keep scrounging for supplies in a chaotic market with jacked-up prices and continued scarcity, 653 skilled nursing facilities informed the government they had completely run out of one or more types of protective supplies at some point in the last two weeks of May, according to records released last week by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS.

“The federal government has got to step up,” said Lori Smetanka, executive director of the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. “We’re now — what? — three months into this pandemic, and these facilities still don’t have enough PPE to protect themselves and their residents?”

A ‘Relentless Commitment’

In April, Trump pledged his administration “will never waver in its relentless commitment to America’s seniors.” But FEMA’s shipments of masks, gloves, gowns and eye protection have had a more modest goal: “to serve as a bridge between other PPE shipments.”

In written comments, FEMA defended the quality of the poncho gowns but said that because of complaints, the contractor was creating a “short instructional video about proper use of the gowns” to share with homes. FEMA officials said that, as of June 4, the agency had shipped packages to 11,287 nursing homes, starting at “the soonest possible date in the COVID-19 global supply chain climate.”

Yet 67 of the Good Samaritan Society’s 147 nursing homes have not received a FEMA shipment, including homes that are fighting the biggest outbreaks in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Greeley, Colorado; and Omaha, Nebraska, according to Nate Schema, the Evangelical Lutheran society’s vice president of operations. “We have not received a shipment in our six or seven hot spots,” he said.

The supplies that did arrive tended to be in one size only, he said, and “the quality wasn’t quite up to the same level we’ve been receiving” through the society’s affiliation with Sanford Health, a large hospital and physician system.

The society has enough equipment, but small nursing home groups and independent homes are still struggling, particularly with obtaining N95 masks, which filter out tiny particles of the virus and are considered the best way to protect both nursing home employees and residents from transmitting it.

The CMS records show 711 nursing homes reported having run out of N95 masks, and 1,963 said they had less than a week’s worth. But FEMA is not shipping any N95 masks, and nursing homes are having trouble obtaining them from other sources. Instead, it is sending surgical masks, but more than 1,000 homes have less than a week’s supply of those.

Messiah Lifeways at Messiah Village in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, received a FEMA shipment this week that had face shields and gloves, but only three days’ worth of surgical masks and “very low low-grade quality” gowns that lacked sleeves, said Katie Andreano, a Messiah communications specialist.

Only two of ArchCare’s five nursing homes have received any FEMA shipments even though it is based in New York City, the site of the nation’s biggest outbreak. The equipment for those two homes lasted less than a week. LaRue tried to procure equipment from abroad, but all of the potential suppliers turned out to be fraudulent. He said ArchCare has had to rely on sporadic supplies from the state and city emergency management offices.

“As we sit here today, I’m still not able to get more than a few days’ supply of N95 masks, and I still struggle to a certain extent with gowns,” LaRue said. “That doesn’t make you sleep at night, because you’re not sure when the next delivery comes.”

‘It’s Not Going To Work’

In addition to the supplies, the administration has dedicated $5 billion to nursing homes out of $175 billion in provider relief funds appropriated by Congress. Hospitals are getting much more. Administrators said money doesn’t solve the broken private supply chains, where the availability of PPE is spotty and the equipment is vastly overpriced.

“Too often, the only signs of FEMA’s much-hyped promise of PPE are scattershot delivery with varying amounts of ragtag supplies,” said Katie Smith Sloan, president and CEO of LeadingAge, an association of nonprofit nursing homes and other service agencies for older people.

The cloth masks from HHS have been particularly perplexing to nursing home administrators, given the caveats that accompanied them. The instructions for the masks said they could be washed up to 15 times, according to Sondra Norder, president and CEO of St. Paul Elder Services in Kaukauna, Wisconsin.

“I don’t know how we would possibly track how many times each mask has been washed,” she said. The instructions also said the masks should not be washed with disinfectants, bleach or chemicals, which is how Norder said nursing homes clean their laundry.

Norder said she laundered about 100 masks and they shrank. “The ones that have been washed are tiny, and I certainly wouldn’t want to put something on someone’s face that hasn’t been laundered,” she said. “All my colleagues [at other nursing homes] received the same thing and were also baffled by it, wondering, ‘How are we going to use these?’”

KHN senior correspondent Christina Jewett contributed to this report.

Federal Help Falters As Nursing Homes Run Short Of Protective Equipment published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

[stephenmccull]

Federal Help Falters As Nursing Homes Run Short Of Protective Equipment

Around the country, nursing homes trying to protect their residents from the coronavirus eagerly await boxes of masks, eyewear and gowns promised by the federal government. But all too often the packages deliver disappointment — if they arrive at all.

Some contain flimsy surgical masks or cloth face coverings that are explicitly not intended for medical use. Others are missing items or have far less than the full week’s worth of protective equipment the government promised to send. Instead of proper medical gowns, many packages hold large blue plastic ponchos.

“It’s like putting a trash bag on,” said Pamela Black, the administrator of Enterprise Estates Nursing Center in Enterprise, Kansas. “There’s no real place for your hands to come out.”

As nursing homes remain the pandemic’s epicenter, the federal government is failing to ensure they have all the personal protective equipment, or PPE, needed to prevent the spread of the virus, according to interviews with administrators and federal data.

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Despite President Donald Trump’s pledge April 30 to “deploy every resource and power that we have�� to protect older Americans, a fifth of the nation’s nursing homes — 3,213 out of more than 15,000 — reported during the last two weeks of May that they had less than a week’s supply of masks, gowns, gloves, eye protectors or hand sanitizer, according to federal records. Of those, 946 reported they had at least one confirmed COVID infection since the pandemic began.

“The federal government’s failure to nationalize the supply chain and take control of it contributed to the deaths in nursing homes,” said Scott LaRue, president and CEO of ArchCare, the health care system of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, which operates five nursing homes.

Widespread equipment shortages continue in some places as the virus rages lethally through nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. More than 217,000 short-term patients and long-term residents in nursing homes have contracted COVID-19, and 43,000 have died.

Some homes still have not received the first of two batches of supplies the Federal Emergency Management Agency said it would ship in May. Instead, some got only cloth masks that the Department of Health and Human Services commissioned through a contract with HanesBrands, the apparel company known for its underwear. An HHS webpage says the masks are not intended for caring for contagious patients but can be given to workers for their commutes or to residents when they leave their rooms.

As homes keep scrounging for supplies in a chaotic market with jacked-up prices and continued scarcity, 653 skilled nursing facilities informed the government they had completely run out of one or more types of protective supplies at some point in the last two weeks of May, according to records released last week by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS.

“The federal government has got to step up,” said Lori Smetanka, executive director of the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. “We’re now — what? — three months into this pandemic, and these facilities still don’t have enough PPE to protect themselves and their residents?”

A ‘Relentless Commitment’

In April, Trump pledged his administration “will never waver in its relentless commitment to America’s seniors.” But FEMA’s shipments of masks, gloves, gowns and eye protection have had a more modest goal: “to serve as a bridge between other PPE shipments.”

In written comments, FEMA defended the quality of the poncho gowns but said that because of complaints, the contractor was creating a “short instructional video about proper use of the gowns” to share with homes. FEMA officials said that, as of June 4, the agency had shipped packages to 11,287 nursing homes, starting at “the soonest possible date in the COVID-19 global supply chain climate.”

Yet 67 of the Good Samaritan Society’s 147 nursing homes have not received a FEMA shipment, including homes that are fighting the biggest outbreaks in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Greeley, Colorado; and Omaha, Nebraska, according to Nate Schema, the Evangelical Lutheran society’s vice president of operations. “We have not received a shipment in our six or seven hot spots,” he said.

The supplies that did arrive tended to be in one size only, he said, and “the quality wasn’t quite up to the same level we’ve been receiving” through the society’s affiliation with Sanford Health, a large hospital and physician system.

The society has enough equipment, but small nursing home groups and independent homes are still struggling, particularly with obtaining N95 masks, which filter out tiny particles of the virus and are considered the best way to protect both nursing home employees and residents from transmitting it.

The CMS records show 711 nursing homes reported having run out of N95 masks, and 1,963 said they had less than a week’s worth. But FEMA is not shipping any N95 masks, and nursing homes are having trouble obtaining them from other sources. Instead, it is sending surgical masks, but more than 1,000 homes have less than a week’s supply of those.

Messiah Lifeways at Messiah Village in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, received a FEMA shipment this week that had face shields and gloves, but only three days’ worth of surgical masks and “very low low-grade quality” gowns that lacked sleeves, said Katie Andreano, a Messiah communications specialist.

Only two of ArchCare’s five nursing homes have received any FEMA shipments even though it is based in New York City, the site of the nation’s biggest outbreak. The equipment for those two homes lasted less than a week. LaRue tried to procure equipment from abroad, but all of the potential suppliers turned out to be fraudulent. He said ArchCare has had to rely on sporadic supplies from the state and city emergency management offices.

“As we sit here today, I’m still not able to get more than a few days’ supply of N95 masks, and I still struggle to a certain extent with gowns,” LaRue said. “That doesn’t make you sleep at night, because you’re not sure when the next delivery comes.”

‘It’s Not Going To Work’

In addition to the supplies, the administration has dedicated $5 billion to nursing homes out of $175 billion in provider relief funds appropriated by Congress. Hospitals are getting much more. Administrators said money doesn’t solve the broken private supply chains, where the availability of PPE is spotty and the equipment is vastly overpriced.

“Too often, the only signs of FEMA’s much-hyped promise of PPE are scattershot delivery with varying amounts of ragtag supplies,” said Katie Smith Sloan, president and CEO of LeadingAge, an association of nonprofit nursing homes and other service agencies for older people.

The cloth masks from HHS have been particularly perplexing to nursing home administrators, given the caveats that accompanied them. The instructions for the masks said they could be washed up to 15 times, according to Sondra Norder, president and CEO of St. Paul Elder Services in Kaukauna, Wisconsin.

“I don’t know how we would possibly track how many times each mask has been washed,” she said. The instructions also said the masks should not be washed with disinfectants, bleach or chemicals, which is how Norder said nursing homes clean their laundry.

Norder said she laundered about 100 masks and they shrank. “The ones that have been washed are tiny, and I certainly wouldn’t want to put something on someone’s face that hasn’t been laundered,” she said. “All my colleagues [at other nursing homes] received the same thing and were also baffled by it, wondering, ‘How are we going to use these?’”

KHN senior correspondent Christina Jewett contributed to this report.

Federal Help Falters As Nursing Homes Run Short Of Protective Equipment published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

[dinafbrownil]

Federal Help Falters As Nursing Homes Run Short Of Protective Equipment

Around the country, nursing homes trying to protect their residents from the coronavirus eagerly await boxes of masks, eyewear and gowns promised by the federal government. But all too often the packages deliver disappointment — if they arrive at all.

Some contain flimsy surgical masks or cloth face coverings that are explicitly not intended for medical use. Others are missing items or have far less than the full week’s worth of protective equipment the government promised to send. Instead of proper medical gowns, many packages hold large blue plastic ponchos.

“It’s like putting a trash bag on,” said Pamela Black, the administrator of Enterprise Estates Nursing Center in Enterprise, Kansas. “There’s no real place for your hands to come out.”

As nursing homes remain the pandemic’s epicenter, the federal government is failing to ensure they have all the personal protective equipment, or PPE, needed to prevent the spread of the virus, according to interviews with administrators and federal data.

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Despite President Donald Trump’s pledge April 30 to “deploy every resource and power that we have” to protect older Americans, a fifth of the nation’s nursing homes — 3,213 out of more than 15,000 — reported during the last two weeks of May that they had less than a week’s supply of masks, gowns, gloves, eye protectors or hand sanitizer, according to federal records. Of those, 946 reported they had at least one confirmed COVID infection since the pandemic began.

“The federal government’s failure to nationalize the supply chain and take control of it contributed to the deaths in nursing homes,” said Scott LaRue, president and CEO of ArchCare, the health care system of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, which operates five nursing homes.

Widespread equipment shortages continue in some places as the virus rages lethally through nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. More than 217,000 short-term patients and long-term residents in nursing homes have contracted COVID-19, and 43,000 have died.

Some homes still have not received the first of two batches of supplies the Federal Emergency Management Agency said it would ship in May. Instead, some got only cloth masks that the Department of Health and Human Services commissioned through a contract with HanesBrands, the apparel company known for its underwear. An HHS webpage says the masks are not intended for caring for contagious patients but can be given to workers for their commutes or to residents when they leave their rooms.

As homes keep scrounging for supplies in a chaotic market with jacked-up prices and continued scarcity, 653 skilled nursing facilities informed the government they had completely run out of one or more types of protective supplies at some point in the last two weeks of May, according to records released last week by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS.

“The federal government has got to step up,” said Lori Smetanka, executive director of the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. “We’re now — what? — three months into this pandemic, and these facilities still don’t have enough PPE to protect themselves and their residents?”

A ‘Relentless Commitment’

In April, Trump pledged his administration “will never waver in its relentless commitment to America’s seniors.” But FEMA’s shipments of masks, gloves, gowns and eye protection have had a more modest goal: “to serve as a bridge between other PPE shipments.”

In written comments, FEMA defended the quality of the poncho gowns but said that because of complaints, the contractor was creating a “short instructional video about proper use of the gowns” to share with homes. FEMA officials said that, as of June 4, the agency had shipped packages to 11,287 nursing homes, starting at “the soonest possible date in the COVID-19 global supply chain climate.”

Yet 67 of the Good Samaritan Society’s 147 nursing homes have not received a FEMA shipment, including homes that are fighting the biggest outbreaks in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Greeley, Colorado; and Omaha, Nebraska, according to Nate Schema, the Evangelical Lutheran society’s vice president of operations. “We have not received a shipment in our six or seven hot spots,” he said.

The supplies that did arrive tended to be in one size only, he said, and “the quality wasn’t quite up to the same level we’ve been receiving” through the society’s affiliation with Sanford Health, a large hospital and physician system.

The society has enough equipment, but small nursing home groups and independent homes are still struggling, particularly with obtaining N95 masks, which filter out tiny particles of the virus and are considered the best way to protect both nursing home employees and residents from transmitting it.

The CMS records show 711 nursing homes reported having run out of N95 masks, and 1,963 said they had less than a week’s worth. But FEMA is not shipping any N95 masks, and nursing homes are having trouble obtaining them from other sources. Instead, it is sending surgical masks, but more than 1,000 homes have less than a week’s supply of those.

Messiah Lifeways at Messiah Village in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, received a FEMA shipment this week that had face shields and gloves, but only three days’ worth of surgical masks and “very low low-grade quality” gowns that lacked sleeves, said Katie Andreano, a Messiah communications specialist.

Only two of ArchCare’s five nursing homes have received any FEMA shipments even though it is based in New York City, the site of the nation’s biggest outbreak. The equipment for those two homes lasted less than a week. LaRue tried to procure equipment from abroad, but all of the potential suppliers turned out to be fraudulent. He said ArchCare has had to rely on sporadic supplies from the state and city emergency management offices.

“As we sit here today, I’m still not able to get more than a few days’ supply of N95 masks, and I still struggle to a certain extent with gowns,” LaRue said. “That doesn’t make you sleep at night, because you’re not sure when the next delivery comes.”

‘It’s Not Going To Work’

In addition to the supplies, the administration has dedicated $5 billion to nursing homes out of $175 billion in provider relief funds appropriated by Congress. Hospitals are getting much more. Administrators said money doesn’t solve the broken private supply chains, where the availability of PPE is spotty and the equipment is vastly overpriced.

“Too often, the only signs of FEMA’s much-hyped promise of PPE are scattershot delivery with varying amounts of ragtag supplies,” said Katie Smith Sloan, president and CEO of LeadingAge, an association of nonprofit nursing homes and other service agencies for older people.

The cloth masks from HHS have been particularly perplexing to nursing home administrators, given the caveats that accompanied them. The instructions for the masks said they could be washed up to 15 times, according to Sondra Norder, president and CEO of St. Paul Elder Services in Kaukauna, Wisconsin.

“I don’t know how we would possibly track how many times each mask has been washed,” she said. The instructions also said the masks should not be washed with disinfectants, bleach or chemicals, which is how Norder said nursing homes clean their laundry.

Norder said she laundered about 100 masks and they shrank. “The ones that have been washed are tiny, and I certainly wouldn’t want to put something on someone’s face that hasn’t been laundered,” she said. “All my colleagues [at other nursing homes] received the same thing and were also baffled by it, wondering, ‘How are we going to use these?’”

KHN senior correspondent Christina Jewett contributed to this report.

from Updates By Dina https://khn.org/news/federal-help-falters-as-nursing-homes-run-short-of-protective-equipment/

[totalnewsuk]

Terrified nursing home boss begs families to collect relatives as coronavirus spirals

At least 20 residents at ArchCare nursing homes in New York have died as the companies president is now asking families to pick up their loved ones. (Picture: AP/Getty)

The president of five nursing homes is begging families to collect their relatives as coronavirus rips through the facilities.

More than 20 elderly residents at ArchCare nursing homes have died of Covid-19 and at least 200 have…

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Coronavirus Patients Caught In Conflict Between Hospital And Nursing Homes

A wrenching conflict is emerging as the COVID-19 virus storms through U.S. communities: Some patients are falling into a no man’s land between hospitals and nursing homes.

Hospitals need to clear out patients who no longer need acute care. But nursing homes don’t want to take patients discharged from hospitals for fear they’ll bring the coronavirus with them.

“It’s a huge and very difficult issue,” said Cassie Sauer, president of the Washington State Hospital Association, whose members were hit early by the coronavirus.

Each side has legitimate concerns. Hospitals in coronavirus hot spots need to free up beds for the next wave of critically ill patients. They are canceling elective and nonessential procedures. They are also trying to move coronavirus patients out of the hospital as quickly as possible.

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The goal is to “allow hospitals to reserve beds for the most severely ill patients by discharging those who are less severely ill to skilled nursing facilities,” Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said a few weeks ago as the federal agency relaxed rules restricting which Medicare patients can receive nursing home care.

Nursing homes are alarmed at the prospect of taking patients who may have coronavirus infections. The consequences could be dire. The first nursing home known to have COVID-19, the Life Care Center in Kirkland, Washington, saw the virus spread like wildfire. It killed 37 people.

“We’re looking at case fatality rates of 30, 40, 50% in nursing homes when coronavirus gets introduced,” said Christopher Laxton, executive director of AMDA — the Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine, which represents nursing home medical directors.

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Fears extend to patients with other conditions, such as strokes or heart attacks, who’ve been in the hospital and do not have COVID-19 symptoms but could harbor the virus.

In its most recent guidance, the American Health Care Association, an industry trade group, said nursing homes can accept patients “who are COVID negative or do not have symptoms.” If someone has symptoms such as a dry cough or fever, they “should be tested for COVID-19 before being admitted to the facility.” If someone is COVID positive, they should be kept only “with other COVID positive residents.”

But nursing home doctors worry this doesn’t go far enough. According to a resolution by the California Association of Long Term Care Medicine, nursing homes should not have to take patients known to have the coronavirus unless “they have two negative tests that are 24 hours apart, OR 10 days after admission AND no fever for 72 hours.” A new AMDA resolution echoes this caution.

“We have an obligation to our patients to draw the line,” said Dr. Michael Wasserman, president of the California association. “Increasing the number of COVID-19 positive residents in facilities — whether these facilities have patients with the virus or not — raises the risk of infecting the uninfected and dramatically increasing the number of deaths.”

For their part, hospital leaders say an emphasis on testing before discharging patients is impractical, given the shortage of tests and delays in receiving results.

“Many nursing homes are requiring a negative COVID-19 test even for patients who were in the hospital for nothing to do with COVID,” said Sauer in Washington state. “We don’t agree with this. It’s using up very limited testing resources.”

Nowhere are tensions higher than in New York, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo has said 73,000 extra hospital beds will be needed within weeks to treat a surge of COVID-19 patients. Hospitals in the state have 53,000 beds.

On Wednesday, the New York State Department of Health issued an advisory noting: “No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the NH [nursing home] solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19.”

Speaking on behalf of nursing home physicians, AMDA voiced strong opposition, calling the policy “over-reaching, not consistent with science, unenforceable, and beyond all, not in the least consistent with patient safety principles” in a statement.

Some nursing homes are sending residents with suspected coronavirus to hospitals for evaluation and then refusing to take them back until tests confirm their negative status.

“Essentially, they’re dumping patients on hospitals and saying, ‘Too bad — you’re stuck with them now,’” said a consultant who works closely with hospitals and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Others want to do their part to serve COVID-19 patients. “It is our obligation to keep the health care system flowing,” said Scott LaRue, president of ArchCare, the health care system of the Archdiocese of New York.

LaRue has no illusions about keeping the coronavirus out of ArchCare’s five nursing homes, which, combined, have 1,700 beds.

“In New York City the virus is everywhere,” he said. That means it has to be managed, not avoided. “Our intention is to take COVID-19 stable patients” and move them to a single floor at each nursing home, he said.

That will happen under two conditions, LaRue said. First, ArchCare will need sufficient personal protective equipment — gowns, masks and face shields — for its staff. Currently, the system can’t get face shields. It was due to run out of gowns by Wednesday.

Second, ArchCare will need to test whether its protocols for managing COVID-positive patients are working. Those include putting patients in isolation, monitoring them more closely, limiting the number of people who can go in, and ensuring that staff use personal protective equipment and are trained properly.

So far, only one of its nursing home patients is known to have COVID-19.

“We won’t know for 14 days if the steps we’re taking are working,” LaRue said.

But it’s unrealistic to expect other nursing homes to follow suit.

“I would be surprised if 10% to 15% of skilled nursing facilities in the U.S. could take a COVID-positive patient and treat that patient safely while ensuring that other residents in the home are safe,” said David Grabowski, a professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School.

In a new commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Grabowski calls for establishing “centers of excellence” to care for patients recovering from COVID-19 and building “temporary capacity” in hot spots where the need for post-hospital services is likely to surge.

That’s beginning to happen. On Tuesday, Cuomo announced that a field hospital being built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to house overflow coronavirus patients at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City would include 1,000 beds for patients who don’t need acute care services.

On Wednesday, a unit of Partners HealthCare, a large Massachusetts health care system, announced a new center for patients recovering from COVID-19 on the fourth floor of Spaulding Hospital for Continuing Care, a long-term care hospital in Cambridge. The center, set to open soon, will have 60 beds and accept patients from Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

In the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, Allina Health, which operates 11 hospitals, is partnering with Presbyterian Homes & Services to convert a 50-bed skilled nursing home to a “step-down site,” said Dr. Emily Downing, a vice president of Allina Health. The goal is to help COVID-19 patients recover so they can return to nursing homes or senior living communities.

Katie Smith Sloan, president of LeadingAge, which represents not-for-profit nursing homes, home care agencies and assisted living centers, said she was hearing about nascent plans to reopen closed nursing homes for COVID-19 patients. Government agencies need to make financing available to build extra capacity to care for these patients, she said.

As for patients who need less intensive care or who need to be quarantined after the hospital to ensure they aren’t infectious, other options exist.

“King County has bought a hotel and is leasing another and is looking at what are now empty ambulatory surgery centers or a Christian summer camp in the area,” said Sauer of the Washington State Hospital Association.

Coronavirus Patients Caught In Conflict Between Hospital And Nursing Homes published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

[stephenmccull]

Coronavirus Patients Caught In Conflict Between Hospital And Nursing Homes

A wrenching conflict is emerging as the COVID-19 virus storms through U.S. communities: Some patients are falling into a no man’s land between hospitals and nursing homes.

Hospitals need to clear out patients who no longer need acute care. But nursing homes don’t want to take patients discharged from hospitals for fear they’ll bring the coronavirus with them.

“It’s a huge and very difficult issue,” said Cassie Sauer, president of the Washington State Hospital Association, whose members were hit early by the coronavirus.

Each side has legitimate concerns. Hospitals in coronavirus hot spots need to free up beds for the next wave of critically ill patients. They are canceling elective and nonessential procedures. They are also trying to move coronavirus patients out of the hospital as quickly as possible.

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The goal is to “allow hospitals to reserve beds for the most severely ill patients by discharging those who are less severely ill to skilled nursing facilities,” Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said a few weeks ago as the federal agency relaxed rules restricting which Medicare patients can receive nursing home care.

Nursing homes are alarmed at the prospect of taking patients who may have coronavirus infections. The consequences could be dire. The first nursing home known to have COVID-19, the Life Care Center in Kirkland, Washington, saw the virus spread like wildfire. It killed 37 people.

“We’re looking at case fatality rates of 30, 40, 50% in nursing homes when coronavirus gets introduced,” said Christopher Laxton, executive director of AMDA — the Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine, which represents nursing home medical directors.

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Fears extend to patients with other conditions, such as strokes or heart attacks, who’ve been in the hospital and do not have COVID-19 symptoms but could harbor the virus.

In its most recent guidance, the American Health Care Association, an industry trade group, said nursing homes can accept patients “who are COVID negative or do not have symptoms.” If someone has symptoms such as a dry cough or fever, they “should be tested for COVID-19 before being admitted to the facility.” If someone is COVID positive, they should be kept only “with other COVID positive residents.”

But nursing home doctors worry this doesn’t go far enough. According to a resolution by the California Association of Long Term Care Medicine, nursing homes should not have to take patients known to have the coronavirus unless “they have two negative tests that are 24 hours apart, OR 10 days after admission AND no fever for 72 hours.” A new AMDA resolution echoes this caution.

“We have an obligation to our patients to draw the line,” said Dr. Michael Wasserman, president of the California association. “Increasing the number of COVID-19 positive residents in facilities — whether these facilities have patients with the virus or not — raises the risk of infecting the uninfected and dramatically increasing the number of deaths.”

For their part, hospital leaders say an emphasis on testing before discharging patients is impractical, given the shortage of tests and delays in receiving results.

“Many nursing homes are requiring a negative COVID-19 test even for patients who were in the hospital for nothing to do with COVID,” said Sauer in Washington state. “We don’t agree with this. It’s using up very limited testing resources.”

Nowhere are tensions higher than in New York, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo has said 73,000 extra hospital beds will be needed within weeks to treat a surge of COVID-19 patients. Hospitals in the state have 53,000 beds.

On Wednesday, the New York State Department of Health issued an advisory noting: “No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the NH [nursing home] solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19.”

Speaking on behalf of nursing home physicians, AMDA voiced strong opposition, calling the policy “over-reaching, not consistent with science, unenforceable, and beyond all, not in the least consistent with patient safety principles” in a statement.

Some nursing homes are sending residents with suspected coronavirus to hospitals for evaluation and then refusing to take them back until tests confirm their negative status.

“Essentially, they’re dumping patients on hospitals and saying, ‘Too bad — you’re stuck with them now,’” said a consultant who works closely with hospitals and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Others want to do their part to serve COVID-19 patients. “It is our obligation to keep the health care system flowing,” said Scott LaRue, president of ArchCare, the health care system of the Archdiocese of New York.

LaRue has no illusions about keeping the coronavirus out of ArchCare’s five nursing homes, which, combined, have 1,700 beds.

“In New York City the virus is everywhere,” he said. That means it has to be managed, not avoided. “Our intention is to take COVID-19 stable patients” and move them to a single floor at each nursing home, he said.

That will happen under two conditions, LaRue said. First, ArchCare will need sufficient personal protective equipment — gowns, masks and face shields — for its staff. Currently, the system can’t get face shields. It was due to run out of gowns by Wednesday.

Second, ArchCare will need to test whether its protocols for managing COVID-positive patients are working. Those include putting patients in isolation, monitoring them more closely, limiting the number of people who can go in, and ensuring that staff use personal protective equipment and are trained properly.

So far, only one of its nursing home patients is known to have COVID-19.

“We won’t know for 14 days if the steps we’re taking are working,” LaRue said.

But it’s unrealistic to expect other nursing homes to follow suit.

“I would be surprised if 10% to 15% of skilled nursing facilities in the U.S. could take a COVID-positive patient and treat that patient safely while ensuring that other residents in the home are safe,” said David Grabowski, a professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School.

In a new commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Grabowski calls for establishing “centers of excellence” to care for patients recovering from COVID-19 and building “temporary capacity” in hot spots where the need for post-hospital services is likely to surge.

That’s beginning to happen. On Tuesday, Cuomo announced that a field hospital being built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to house overflow coronavirus patients at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City would include 1,000 beds for patients who don’t need acute care services.

On Wednesday, a unit of Partners HealthCare, a large Massachusetts health care system, announced a new center for patients recovering from COVID-19 on the fourth floor of Spaulding Hospital for Continuing Care, a long-term care hospital in Cambridge. The center, set to open soon, will have 60 beds and accept patients from Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

In the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, Allina Health, which operates 11 hospitals, is partnering with Presbyterian Homes & Services to convert a 50-bed skilled nursing home to a “step-down site,” said Dr. Emily Downing, a vice president of Allina Health. The goal is to help COVID-19 patients recover so they can return to nursing homes or senior living communities.

Katie Smith Sloan, president of LeadingAge, which represents not-for-profit nursing homes, home care agencies and assisted living centers, said she was hearing about nascent plans to reopen closed nursing homes for COVID-19 patients. Government agencies need to make financing available to build extra capacity to care for these patients, she said.

As for patients who need less intensive care or who need to be quarantined after the hospital to ensure they aren’t infectious, other options exist.

“King County has bought a hotel and is leasing another and is looking at what are now empty ambulatory surgery centers or a Christian summer camp in the area,” said Sauer of the Washington State Hospital Association.

Coronavirus Patients Caught In Conflict Between Hospital And Nursing Homes published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

[dinafbrownil]

Coronavirus Patients Caught In Conflict Between Hospital And Nursing Homes

A wrenching conflict is emerging as the COVID-19 virus storms through U.S. communities: Some patients are falling into a no man’s land between hospitals and nursing homes.

Hospitals need to clear out patients who no longer need acute care. But nursing homes don’t want to take patients discharged from hospitals for fear they’ll bring the coronavirus with them.

“It’s a huge and very difficult issue,” said Cassie Sauer, president of the Washington State Hospital Association, whose members were hit early by the coronavirus.

Each side has legitimate concerns. Hospitals in coronavirus hot spots need to free up beds for the next wave of critically ill patients. They are canceling elective and nonessential procedures. They are also trying to move coronavirus patients out of the hospital as quickly as possible.

Email Sign-Up

Subscribe to KHN’s free Morning Briefing.

Sign Up

Please confirm your email address below:

Sign Up

The goal is to “allow hospitals to reserve beds for the most severely ill patients by discharging those who are less severely ill to skilled nursing facilities,” Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said a few weeks ago as the federal agency relaxed rules restricting which Medicare patients can receive nursing home care.

Nursing homes are alarmed at the prospect of taking patients who may have coronavirus infections. The consequences could be dire. The first nursing home known to have COVID-19, the Life Care Center in Kirkland, Washington, saw the virus spread like wildfire. It killed 37 people.

“We’re looking at case fatality rates of 30, 40, 50% in nursing homes when coronavirus gets introduced,” said Christopher Laxton, executive director of AMDA — the Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine, which represents nursing home medical directors.

Related Stories

‘Red Dawn Breaking Bad’: Officials Warned About Safety Gear Shortfall Early On, Emails Show Mar 28

In Coronavirus Relief Bill, Hospitals Poised To Get Massive Infusion Of Cash Mar 27

Help Wanted: Retired Doctors And Nurses Don Scrubs Again In Coronavirus Fight Mar 27

Shortfall Of Comfort Care Signals Undue Suffering For Coronavirus Patients Mar 26

All KHN Coronavirus Stories

Fears extend to patients with other conditions, such as strokes or heart attacks, who’ve been in the hospital and do not have COVID-19 symptoms but could harbor the virus.

In its most recent guidance, the American Health Care Association, an industry trade group, said nursing homes can accept patients “who are COVID negative or do not have symptoms.” If someone has symptoms such as a dry cough or fever, they “should be tested for COVID-19 before being admitted to the facility.” If someone is COVID positive, they should be kept only “with other COVID positive residents.”

But nursing home doctors worry this doesn’t go far enough. According to a resolution by the California Association of Long Term Care Medicine, nursing homes should not have to take patients known to have the coronavirus unless “they have two negative tests that are 24 hours apart, OR 10 days after admission AND no fever for 72 hours.” A new AMDA resolution echoes this caution.

“We have an obligation to our patients to draw the line,” said Dr. Michael Wasserman, president of the California association. “Increasing the number of COVID-19 positive residents in facilities — whether these facilities have patients with the virus or not — raises the risk of infecting the uninfected and dramatically increasing the number of deaths.”

For their part, hospital leaders say an emphasis on testing before discharging patients is impractical, given the shortage of tests and delays in receiving results.

“Many nursing homes are requiring a negative COVID-19 test even for patients who were in the hospital for nothing to do with COVID,” said Sauer in Washington state. “We don’t agree with this. It’s using up very limited testing resources.”

Nowhere are tensions higher than in New York, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo has said 73,000 extra hospital beds will be needed within weeks to treat a surge of COVID-19 patients. Hospitals in the state have 53,000 beds.

On Wednesday, the New York State Department of Health issued an advisory noting: “No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the NH [nursing home] solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19.”

Speaking on behalf of nursing home physicians, AMDA voiced strong opposition, calling the policy “over-reaching, not consistent with science, unenforceable, and beyond all, not in the least consistent with patient safety principles” in a statement.

Some nursing homes are sending residents with suspected coronavirus to hospitals for evaluation and then refusing to take them back until tests confirm their negative status.

“Essentially, they’re dumping patients on hospitals and saying, ‘Too bad — you’re stuck with them now,’” said a consultant who works closely with hospitals and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Others want to do their part to serve COVID-19 patients. “It is our obligation to keep the health care system flowing,” said Scott LaRue, president of ArchCare, the health care system of the Archdiocese of New York.

LaRue has no illusions about keeping the coronavirus out of ArchCare’s five nursing homes, which, combined, have 1,700 beds.

“In New York City the virus is everywhere,” he said. That means it has to be managed, not avoided. “Our intention is to take COVID-19 stable patients” and move them to a single floor at each nursing home, he said.

That will happen under two conditions, LaRue said. First, ArchCare will need sufficient personal protective equipment — gowns, masks and face shields — for its staff. Currently, the system can’t get face shields. It was due to run out of gowns by Wednesday.

Second, ArchCare will need to test whether its protocols for managing COVID-positive patients are working. Those include putting patients in isolation, monitoring them more closely, limiting the number of people who can go in, and ensuring that staff use personal protective equipment and are trained properly.

So far, only one of its nursing home patients is known to have COVID-19.

“We won’t know for 14 days if the steps we’re taking are working,” LaRue said.

But it’s unrealistic to expect other nursing homes to follow suit.

“I would be surprised if 10% to 15% of skilled nursing facilities in the U.S. could take a COVID-positive patient and treat that patient safely while ensuring that other residents in the home are safe,” said David Grabowski, a professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School.

In a new commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Grabowski calls for establishing “centers of excellence” to care for patients recovering from COVID-19 and building “temporary capacity” in hot spots where the need for post-hospital services is likely to surge.

That’s beginning to happen. On Tuesday, Cuomo announced that a field hospital being built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to house overflow coronavirus patients at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City would include 1,000 beds for patients who don’t need acute care services.

On Wednesday, a unit of Partners HealthCare, a large Massachusetts health care system, announced a new center for patients recovering from COVID-19 on the fourth floor of Spaulding Hospital for Continuing Care, a long-term care hospital in Cambridge. The center, set to open soon, will have 60 beds and accept patients from Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

In the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, Allina Health, which operates 11 hospitals, is partnering with Presbyterian Homes & Services to convert a 50-bed skilled nursing home to a “step-down site,” said Dr. Emily Downing, a vice president of Allina Health. The goal is to help COVID-19 patients recover so they can return to nursing homes or senior living communities.

Katie Smith Sloan, president of LeadingAge, which represents not-for-profit nursing homes, home care agencies and assisted living centers, said she was hearing about nascent plans to reopen closed nursing homes for COVID-19 patients. Government agencies need to make financing available to build extra capacity to care for these patients, she said.

As for patients who need less intensive care or who need to be quarantined after the hospital to ensure they aren’t infectious, other options exist.

“King County has bought a hotel and is leasing another and is looking at what are now empty ambulatory surgery centers or a Christian summer camp in the area,” said Sauer of the Washington State Hospital Association.

from Updates By Dina https://khn.org/news/coronavirus-patients-caught-in-conflict-between-hospital-and-nursing-homes/

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mail room clerk - Archcare | NeedHired

Sorts and distributes mail to residents. Collects administrative and mail processes for postage or distribution to other departments.

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Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) Full Time and Part Time All S... - Archcare | SunHired

ArchCare, the Continuing Care Community of the Archdiocese of New York, provides top-quality healthcare and other services to thousands of people each day…

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