Reclaiming soft feet takes is good exfoliation. But a pumice stone won’t accomplish the task – it takes chemical exfoliation and physical exfoliation, done regularly, to restore your feet once more into a softer state.
Author: SeniorWomenWeb
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Nursing Homes With Serious Quality Issues
Once again it’s worth our while to publish Medicare’s list of nursing home that has serious quality issues. What follows is from Medicare’s most recent report concerning these ratings:
This webpage offers a list of nursing homes that (a) have had a history of serious quality issues and (b) are included in a special program to stimulate improvements in their quality of care. Please take a minute to review this background information on our “Special Focus Facility” initiative. The background here will help you be as informed as possible when you discuss your long term care options with any nursing home that is listed here – and what they are doing to improve their quality of care.
Background
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and States visit nursing homes on a regular basis to determine if the nursing homes are providing the quality of care that Medicare and Medicaid requires. These “survey” or “inspection” teams will identify deficiencies in the quality of care that is provided. They also identify any deficiencies in meeting CMS safety requirements (such as protection from fire hazards). When deficiencies are identified, we require that the problems be corrected. If serious problems are not corrected, we may terminate the nursing home’s participation in Medicare and Medicaid.
Most nursing homes have some deficiencies, with the average being 6-7 deficiencies per survey. Most nursing homes correct their problems within a reasonable period of time. However, we have found that a minority of nursing homes have:
•More problems than other nursing homes (about twice the average number of deficiencies),
•More serious problems than most other nursing homes (including harm or injury experienced by residents), and
•A pattern of serious problems that has persisted over a long period of time (as measured over the three years before the date the nursing home was first put on the SFF list).
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Shop at the Museum: The Well-Edited V&A
The newly stocked and themed shop at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum has a wide variety of items that are inexpensive, light in tone and weight as well as, well, just fun. We bought small items for almost every member of the family at this shop recently when on a visit.
Take, for instance, the paper hat selection. Priced at two pounds fifty (consult a currency website for current dollar conversions such as XE, there’s a choice of a top hat, summer flowers or harlequin selections. Choosing from the jewelry items available (735), is an enjoyable task, such as the rose stud earrings and textile jewelry inspired by flowers and fruit seen in medieval samplers and cross stitch designs or a 1940s Arts and Craft brooch.
For children consider the Design Your Own Paper Fans kit, a Medieval and Renaissance Chess Set, Knight Dragon Puzzle or personalize two baby bibs with an embroidery kit.
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Shopping for Home and Body: Iris Hantverk: How to Brush With Style
While at Liberty’s bath shop in London we came across this line of brushes for cleaning and bath purposes. They were so appealing that we were delighted to find one of our favorite shopping sites, Fjorn, also carries them. We looked further and found Iris Handverk listed at other sites in the US, too, but found the duck crowning bath brush we had purchased at the Iris Hantverk site itself. Although we don’t have infant grandchildren any longer, it’s an extremely appealing item and perfect for those Holiday and birthday gifts that nowadays should be practical as well as good looking. However, Iris Hantverk products are not inexpensive but natural fiber and fine woods products rarely are.
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Craft in America, Part Two, a Virtual Look
The new television season presents Part Two of the PBS look at America’s unique approach to the field of crafts: Craft in America. There is an online virtual look at the field, featuring the areas of wood, clay, metal,glass, fiber and emerging artists. Streaming video at the PBS site will be available, as well as links to museum exhibits, artists websites and a preview of the season.
“There’s a rich heritage of craft in this country that reflects our spirit, history, and creative spark. Generation after generation, craft has been reinvented by talented artists who examine, interpret, and execute their ideas.”
An education section provides materials for educators and students as well as the audience and viewers.
Part One of Craft in America (2007) can be viewed and enjoyed in case you missed that season and episodes. (more…)
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Are Thousands Dying from a Lack of Health Inurance? FactCheck.org Examines the Question
FactCheck.org issued the following statements (here, in part) of the veracity of the statement about the number of annual deaths that could be blamed on a lack of health insurance:
Dying from Lack of Insurance
A new study from researchers with the Harvard Medical School found that 45,000 deaths a year can be attributed to the lack of health insurance. Our readers ask: Really? And, they want to know, isn’t this finding actually from the single-payer advocacy group Physicians for a National Health Program?
We’ll answer the latter first: The study was conducted by six researchers who were all with the Department of Medicine at Cambridge Health Alliance, which is affiliated with Harvard Medical School. It was published by the American Journal of Public Health, a peer-reviewed journal. Lead author Dr. Andrew P. Wilper is now with the University of Washington Medical School. As for PNHP, two of the authors have strong connections with the group: Dr. Steffie Woolhandler and Dr. David Himmelstein, a professor and associate professor of medicine, respectively, at Harvard Medical School, are co-founders of PNHP, a group of physicians that advocates for a single-payer health care system.
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Now, on to the tough question: Is the 45,000 figure accurate? We can’t say for sure, but scores of other studies also conclude that persons without health insurance have a higher chance of dying prematurely than those with health insurance. A committee headed by Dr. John Z. Ayanian of the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine reviewed nearly 100 such studies released since 2002. And in March he summed up the findings for Congress this way:
Ayanian’s testimony to Congress, March 2009: Uninsured Americans frequently delay or forgo doctors’ visits, prescription medications, and other effective treatments, even when they have serious disease or life-threatening conditions. … Because uninsured adults seek health care less often than insured adults, they are often unaware of health problems such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or early-stage cancer. Uninsured adults are also much less likely to receive vaccinations, cancer screening services such as mammography and colonoscopy, and other effective preventive services.
The 45,000 estimate is at the high end of estimates, but earlier studies also have put the number of excess deaths from lack of insurance coverage in the thousands:
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JAMA’s Study of Online Posting of Unprofessional Content by Medical Students
An abstract from the Journal of American Medical Association’s study about the posting of unprofessional material by medical students; the full text requires a subscription or payment:
Context Web 2.0 applications, such as social networking sites, are creating new challenges for medical professionalism. The scope of this problem in undergraduate medical education is not well-defined.
Objective To assess the experience of US medical schools with online posting of unprofessional content by students and existing medical school policies to address online posting.
Design, Setting, and Participants An anonymous electronic survey was sent to deans of student affairs, their representatives, or counterparts from each institution in the Association of American Medical Colleges. Data were collected in March and April 2009.
Main Outcome Measures Percentage of schools reporting incidents of students posting unprofessional content online, type of professionalism infraction, disciplinary actions taken, existence of institution policies, and plans for policy development.
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Women Winemakers: Big House’s Good-Value Selection Grows with Georgetta Dane at the Helm
Sharon Kapnick writes: Dane approaches blending much as a perfumer approaches her craft, mixing essential oils with a base, middle notes and top notes. She’s combined as many as 24 varieties in one wine (Big House Red)!
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Relaxing to the Internet
Introduction to a Pew Internet and American Life report
Three-quarters of online economic users go online to relax and take their minds off of the recession
Online economic users under the age of 30 are especially likely to turn to the internet as a diversion, although a range of age groups take part in these activities. Going online to relax is a near-universal activity among online economic users, regardless of whether they have been personally impacted by the recession or not. Those who use the internet as a diversion also are highly engaged in other online activities related to the economic recession.
When asked whether they used the internet to relax and help get their minds off of the recent economic or financial problems, three-quarters (74%) of online economic users said they had done so.
Listening to music and watching online videos are among the most common of the activities we evaluated; roughly half of all online economic users have done each of these activities to relax.
Approximately one-third of online economic users have played online games or chatted with friends (on a social networking site, listserv or other online group), while an additional 22% have taken their minds off of their economic or financial circumstances by creating or posting content online.
Many online economic users turn to the internet as a diversion; however, these individuals engage in a wide range of more serious online pursuits as well. For example, fully 76% of those who have gone online to relax or take their minds off of the economy have also gone online to find the lowest price on something they need to buy.