I have heard of this company and it sounds like a great alternative to nursing home placement. Anything to keep the elderly home is worth looking into.

Cathy Smith started thinking about nursing homes after her 76-year-old mother, Dolly, suffered a heart attack.

Then she heard about Home Instead Senior Care, a business that sends caregivers to older people’s homes to help with nonmedical tasks or just to provide company.

The Smiths became clients of a growing senior care industry that promises to become even more lucrative as the older population increases.

Experts say the potential market is almost limitless. Propelling the growth are 36 million Americans over 65 and an additional 76 million boomers who’ll turn 65 by 2030.

Surveys show that eight of 10 seniors would prefer to “age in place,” remaining in their homes as long as possible and relying on aides when necessary.

“My parents’ caregiver has become part of our family,” Ms. Smith said.

The woman visits the Smiths twice each week, doing whatever has to be done. That may mean driving Ms. Smith’s mother to the mall or reminding her to take her medicine.

Philip Fritz, the Home Instead franchise owner in Dallas who placed the caregiver in the Smiths’ home, said most of his calls come from adult children such as Ms. Smith.

“Many are juggling the demands of two households and can’t take care of their elders by themselves anymore,” he said.

Biggest of the bunch
Mr. Fritz and his wife, Libbie, started their business with a couple of clients four years ago. Today they have 75 caregivers who serve 80 families throughout the Dallas area.

National franchising companies have emerged as the largest providers in a business once populated only by individuals. Home Instead is the biggest, with 600 franchises that employ 29,000 caregivers and serve 50,000 clients annually in 47 states and five foreign countries.

The Omaha-based business adds 50 franchises a year.

Founder and president Paul Hogan said the inspiration for his company came when his grandmother moved in with his mother because she was too weak to live alone.

“Our vision was to provide many of the same services my family had provided for Grandma Eleanor,” he said.

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The feds are closing down this nursing home, as it should!

The Wisconsin Department of Health & Family Services said Friday plans to close Havenwood Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Milwaukee by this fall.

The move comes after the agency assumed operation of the center under a May 13 court order. The state agency took control of Havenwood, 3333 W. Highland Blvd., under a receivership after a state and federal investigation found “dire conditions” at the center.

Allegations of widespread neglect and abuse, along with possible Medicaid fraud and complaints by employees about paychecks bouncing, brought a group of state and federal authorities together in a criminal investigation of Havenwood, DHFS said in May.

On April 27, the facility’s owners, Leo Feigenbaum and Karen Mueller-Mason, stepped down as operators.

The Department of Health & Family Services said it does not operate nursing homes on a long-term basis. As receiver, it contracted with Pathway Health Services Inc., Brookfield, to oversee the day-to-day operation of the center.

DHFS secretary Helene Nelson said the situation at Havenwood has been “stabilized” and that it is time for a “more permanent solution.”

The agency, in consultation with Pathways and other Milwaukee providers, plans to find high quality, safe and stable placements for each Havenwood resident, in either another nursing home or other appropriate community setting.

The Department of Health & Family Services is also making the nursing home available for purchase by a qualified operator.

Investigations continue into the actions of Havenwood’s former administrators.

Interesting study and results…

Scientists in Hong Kong have shed new light on why cell repair is less efficient in older people after a breakthrough discovery on premature aging, a rare genetic disease that affects one in four million babies.

Premature aging, or Hutchison-Gilford Progeria Syndrome (progeria), is obvious in the appearance of a child before it is a year old. Although their mental faculties are normal, they stop growing, lose body fat and suffer from wrinkled skin and hair loss.

Like old people, they suffer stiff joints and a buildup of plaque in arteries which can lead to heart disease and stroke. Most die of cardiovascular diseases before they are 20.

In 2003, a team of scientists in the United States found that progeria was caused by mutation in a protein called Lamin A, which lines the nucleus in human cells.

A team at the University of Hong Kong, led by Zhou Zhongjun, took the research a step further in 2004 and found that mutated Lamin A actually disrupted the repair process in cells, thus resulting in accelerated aging.

The study was published in the July issue of the Nature Medicine journal.

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Hmm…seems to me this is nothing new. I have heard many million times about how these drugs will interupt the sleep of elderly people, causing nocturia.

After age 60, people are more likely to have to get up at least twice in the middle of the night to urinate - called nocturia - if they also have high blood pressure and take diuretics, a study shows. And the older people get, the more likely they are to have this problem.

Although doctors often tell people with nocturia to avoid coffee and nighttime fluids, in the current study neither appeared to increase the risk of nocturia in older adults.

“We are very used to giving advice about caffeine intake to deal with bladder problems,” study author Dr. Theodore M. Johnson II told Reuters Health. “While it is true that caffeine causes an overproduction of urine and may also be a bladder irritant, this advice may be less important in nocturia,” he noted.

Johnson, who is based at the Birmingham/Atlanta Department of Veterans Affairs Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center, added that nocturia is a “symptom,” not a condition, which may result from low bladder capacity, too much urine production at night, or a sleep disturbance.

In the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, Johnson and his team note that nocturia can significantly disrupt older adults’ sleep, and doubles their risk of falling.

To investigate what factors are associated with nocturia, the researchers asked 1,632 people aged 60 and older to estimate the number of times they usually urinate after going to sleep at night. People were followed for several years; anyone who said they urinated at least twice after bed was diagnosed with nocturia.

Nearly one-third of the people who participated in the study were diagnosed with nocturia, and a handful (1 percent) said they had to get up at least six times every night to urinate.

Examining all variables, Johnson and his colleagues found that having hypertension, taking diuretics, and increased age were associated with a higher risk of nocturia.

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This is just an FYI.

A screening test for prostate cancer taken by millions of men every year is not terribly accurate and not even the best result ensures that a man is cancer-free, experts said on Tuesday.

They found the standard prostate-specific antigen, or PSA test, produces many false positives and false negatives — meaning some men who think they do not have cancer actually do, while others may undergo uncomfortable biopsies only to learn there is no tumor after all.

“Patients have assumed, ‘My PSA is below 4. It’s normal. I have no risk’,” Dr. Ian Thompson of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, who led the study, told a news conference.

In fact, some men with PSA levels of 1 had prostate cancer, his study showed. Others with higher PSA levels did not have prostate cancer.

If all men got biopsies when PSA reached 1.1, more than 80 percent of all prostate cancers would be detected, Thompson said. But 61 percent of men who got biopsies would turn out not to have cancer.

A cutoff of 2.6 would detect only 40.5 percent of cancer cases.

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