The rats are coming! The rats are coming!
Our long-term care facilities are apparently under ongoing attack, and we desperately need a hero.
Things I Think by Gary Tetz
Embracing the journey in a Red Zone world
Call it a blessing or a curse, but give me a life experience, and I’ll connect it to long-term care in 300 words, or your money back.
Happy PDPM Day!
It might be best to start creating some ground rules for how we’ll be observing PDPM Day in the future.
Tickle me, Earmo
Resist the urge to rush outside and attach jumper cables to your earlobes — for now.
Never too late to be undermined
Once again, science has undermined the foundation on which another of my excuses is built.
A gentle slap on the wrist
I choose to believe I have friends, and chatted with one of them recently in the lobby of a nursing home. I felt the conversation was going extremely well. I listened attentively, and contributed interesting nuggets and wry witticisms on various long-term care topics. Every non-verbal body language signal she sent supported my perception of…
Better than bees in your eye
Those adorable flying insects buzzing around and bringing cheer to your long-term care facility right now? A new study reveals that they’re probably infested with and spreading terrifying superbugs.
Murder, they spoke
Like a real-crime podcast about murder. That’s the way we need to tell the story of our long-term care staffing or funding woes if we want anyone to actually pay attention.
Privacy for All
We hear a lot about Medicare for All. How about if we start with Privacy for All, and see how that goes first?
My high-sodium epiphany
In long-term care, we deal with the unexpected all the time. Many of the people we serve are there because something unanticipated happened, crashing into their lives like a no-warning tsunami — or a tamari bottle falling from the sky.
This time, memory loss researchers go too far
It seems that people who have the most hostility and difficulty coping with stress as young people don’t remember things as well as those with the least.
P is for ’possum
After receiving a flash of unexpected insight straight from the universe, I can finally say definitively: The P in PDPM is for ’possum. And, yes, there’s a story to tell.
Doing the Jellyfish
While walking the beach this morning, on the Atlantic Coast where I’m taking an alleged vacation, I happened upon a marooned jellyfish left high and dry by the receding tide. Just a lifeless, weirdly beautiful blob of 95% water slowly evaporating in the sun. My first thought was, “Yeah, I’ve felt like that.” Maybe you…
Celebrating the CAN, er, CNA
Here’s how you’ll know I’m sincere in my desire to celebrate some of long-term care’s most uncelebrated people. I’m willing to spend the next two hours trying to get the Word program to stop autocorrecting CNA to CAN.
Bring in the rocks
The troubling news that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is conducting a “comprehensive review” of nursing home regulations hit me like a truckload of giant boulders dropped on a homeless camp.
What must that be like?
“What must that be like?” It can serve as a mantra, helping us view each interaction, no matter how painful, with acceptance and resilience.
People read this stuff?
Will He Who Shall Not be Named start tweeting about me now? Will I get a pejorative nickname like Lyin’ Ted or Crooked HIllary? Testy Tetz perhaps?
Listen up! It’s the CMS podcast
If you’ve ever secretly longed for a way to combine the impenetrability of American healthcare policy with the ease of 21st century communication technology, you’ll be relieved and delighted to learn CMS now has a podcast.
Sure, you’re smart. But how well do you merge?
Isn’t finding a long-term addition to the team mostly about the culture and the fit? That’s why it’s imperative to find out how he or she is likely to behave on a freeway on-ramp (or office hallway).
It’s time for LTC consultants to change
After nights of sleepless worry on consultants’ behalf, I’ve developed a tweak to the old consulting model that will transform the way they do business and make their skills newly marketable.
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