Senior Living Today

Many older adults were at risk of going hungry before the pandemic, local advocates say, but COVID-19 prevention measures made it even harder for seniors to ensure their next meal. Dining programs at churches and community centers were canceled to avoid virus transmission. Family and friends had to keep a distance. And the economic impact on families undoubtedly had a toll on seniors living in multigenerational and low-income households. But those involved with efforts to make sure kupuna in need have enough food say new momentum has emerged over the past year. For the first time, a patchwork of meal delivery services has transformed into a statewide coalition of 40 organizations working in tandem as part of the Kupuna Food Security Coalition. Kokua Kalihi Valley staff member Stella Jacinto, left, prepares some food and supplies for Estrelia Maduli at the Kokua Kalihi Valley Comprehensive Family Services building. …
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Ashton Harrison For home health organizations, growing and strengthening your referral network is an important component to operational success. The pandemic brought on many new challenges for engaging with referral sources, and forced agencies to re-evaluate their referral targeting strategies. In Trella’s recently released “2020 Industry Trend Report,” exploring trends from Medicare claims data through Q2 2020, we discovered home health admissions decreased 5.2% year-over-year in Q1 2020. This decrease could be due to various things, including a decline in overall fee-for-service (FFS) beneficiaries, a lower rate of home health referrals and a reduced number of elective surgeries at the beginning of the pandemic.…
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Boston, MA, April 21, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Mass General Brigham has named Andy Shin, JD, MPH, MBA, Senior Vice President of Strategy. Shin will work with senior leaders across Mass General Brigham to help inform, shape and advance the Mass General Brigham strategy.   “Our system-wide strategy lays out the priorities, goals and plans for building the world-class integrated academic healthcare system of the future with patients at the center—transforming care and its affordability, improving outcomes and extending our impact locally, regionally and nationally,” said Jeff Weiss, JD, Chief Strategy & Transformation Officer for Mass General Brigham. “Andy will play a pivotal role in helping us to continuously evolve our strategy to meet the needs of our patients and support our four-part mission of enhancing patient care, leading groundbreaking research and discovery, teaching medicine’s best minds and serving our community.…
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Despite more than a century of literature documenting racial and ethnic health inequities,1–5 few health systems have made the achievement of health equity a central pillar of their strategy. The confluence of the disproportionate Covid-19 case and mortality rates in people of color and the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent civil unrest have once again thrust the issue of racial health inequities to the fore. We explain why Rush University Medical Center (RUMC), a Chicago-based academic health system, initiated a health equity strategy in 2016 to address racial health inequities. We discuss: (1) Rush’s launching of a health care equity strategy; (2) the creation of the Rush health equity framework, including expansion into the community via the creation of West Side United (WSU) — a regional racial health equity collaborative aligned with the City of Chicago’s Healthy Chicago 2025 public health plan6; and (3) the adaptation of the health equity strategy in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and the implications for the future.…
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