A “Little Side Step” Means You Get Stomped On! The Bed Tax and New Mexico.

Ooo I love to dance a little sidestep,Now they see me, now they don’t,I’ve come and gone,AND Oooo I love to sweep around the wide step,Cut a little swathe and lead the people on.”- “The Sidestep,” sung by the Governor in The Best Little Whorehouse in TexasRemember that little song and dance routine in the [...]

Medicaid and Provider Taxes–A Primer on Economics

I know that some in Texas support the idea of a provider tax on nursing homes to make up for shortfalls in Medicaid funding. For those who do–and those who don’t know one way or another–I invite you to go read Dr. Bob at The Doctor is In about a similar tax his state of [...]

Reflections On Being A Nurse

Shrinkette, a psychiatrist, provides a roundup of the reflections of a number of Nurses on what it takes to survive in the profession. She begins with a list of what it takes to be a nurse compiled by a nursing instructor at Top of My Head: What is takes to be a nurse:1. To see [...]

Medicare & Wheelchairs

The Washington Post reported that CMS has reconsidered its criteria for covering motorized wheelchairs. According to the writer, Cindy Skrzycki: The Medicare program recently introduced three major regulatory initiatives to tighten up eligibility, reduce payments and assure the legitimacy of the providers. Then you have to read through almost the entire long article about the [...]

Medicare Prescription Drug Rules Now Issued

Fifteen hundred pages of rules governing the Medicare Prescription Drug program have now been published in final form. Are you feeling a little overwhelmed at this point? The Washington Post published a piece on this describing the changes made to the rules as proposed last summer: The agency also outlined several changes made in the [...]

Do Your Residents Use Plavix?

The New York Times published a piece about a study raising questions about its safety: Patients taking Plavix, a popular and expensive antistroke drug, experience more than 12 times as many ulcers as patients who take aspirin plus a heartburn pill, a study to be published today in The New England Journal of Medicine found.Up [...]

What About Tort Reform?

Dr. Charles alerts us to an archived editorial on tort reform published in the New York Times. Common Good excerpts the article here. The title of the article is It’s Time to Try Special Health Courts. Here’s the excerpt: We hold no brief for the current medical liability system, which does a poor job of [...]

Ms. Manners For Surveyors

Representative Deshotel has filed a bill which mandates that surveyors treat nursing facility staff with courtesy during inspections. It reads specifically: Sec. 242.0447. DUTIES OF REPRESENTATIVES. The department shall adopt written policies requiring representatives of the department to treat the residents of an institution and the institution’s staff with courtesy, consideration, and respect during an [...]