As of midday Thursday, health care facilities along the Georgia coast were preparing to receive their patients who were returning from evacuations triggered by Hurricane Dorian. The storm did not hit Georgia as hard as was feared last week, but it brushed the state’s coast, knocking out power to thousands, before heading north to pound…
State regulators have a backlog of about 200 complaints against nursing homes that need investigation, officials say. A high number of job vacancies for nurse surveyors is a major cause of the complaint backlog, according to the state Department of Community Health. The agency said the unaddressed nursing home complaints were not “immediate jeopardy’’ problems,…
Hospitals, nursing homes and assisted living facilities in Georgia are receiving patients evacuating from the Carolinas as Hurricane Florence approaches the Southeastern coast, state officials said Tuesday. Georgia appears likely to escape the brunt of the Category 4 storm as it spins toward landfall. But state health care officials are preparing for an influx of evacuees…
An analysis of Medicare data shows that nearly half of Georgia nursing homes recently were found “below average’’ or “much below average’’ in their staffing levels of registered nurses. RNs are the highest-trained caregivers required to be on staff in a nursing home, and they supervise other nurses and aides. Medicare mandates that every facility…
To the casual observer, he was a friendly guy with a cowboy hat who roamed the state Capitol to push legislation to help Georgia’s seniors. But to those who knew him well, Charles “Chuck’’ Ware was the consummate advocate, a man whose work touched countless lives. He passed away recently at age 88. “From accessible building codes…
Georgia’s death toll from Alzheimer’s disease has increased by 201 percent since the year 2000, and now exceeds 3,700 people annually. That jump was included in new statistics on the disease released Tuesday by the Alzheimer’s Association at a state Capitol news conference. An estimated 140,000 Georgians are living with Alzheimer’s, and the number is expected to…
“Fifty dollars just doesn’t go far,’’ Bryant Kimbrell says. Kimbrell, 67, is referring to the amount of money that a nursing home resident on Medicaid now gets every month as a personal needs allowance. A resident of a nursing home in Sylvester, in South Georgia, Kimbrell says he supports an increase in that allotment to…
The case started with a tip from concerned Dougherty County citizens. They told authorities that residents of some Albany apartments were approaching people and “begging for food.’’ Those July complaints have culminated in the arrest of three people in what was described Tuesday by Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr as a “horrific elder abuse scheme.’’ The residents…
Gov. Nathan Deal, in his final State of the State address, announced Thursday that he is recommending $22.9 million in additional funding for children’s mental health services. He based the funding on the work of a state commission on children’s mental health, which recently issued recommendation for improving kids’ services.ie Deal, a Republican former congressman, has been elected…
An analysis of federal inspection records has found that 43 percent of Georgia nursing homes have been cited for infection-related problems in recent years. That percentage, though, is one of the lowest among the states, the Kaiser Health News study found. The KHN analysis of four years of federal inspection records shows 74 percent of…