Wendy Williams seemed ecstatic to be reunited with her purple chair.Instagram/thewendyexperiencepodc
How you doing?!
Wendy Williams was all smiles as she took her place in the iconic
purple chair she used on “The Wendy Williams Show” for over 12 years.
The 58-year-old star took to Instagram
on Thursday to tell her fans to “stay tuned” for her upcoming podcast,
“The Wendy Experience,” adding, “About Last NIGHT… Team WENDY!”
Williams — who kept things casual in a pair of black leggings, a
sweatshirt with the podcast’s logo on it and a pair of fuzzy boots — was
also joined by her management team for one of the photos.
She told fans to “stay tuned” for her upcoming podcast. Instagram/thewendyexperiencepodc
“Good to see you in the purple chair❤️,” one fan commented.
“You look amazing Wendy! We are waiting for your return! Let’s go! How you doing!💜💜💜,” another chimed in.
“We love you. Your health and well-being is the top priority, please care for yourself,” a third added. “The way we treat ourselves should be the same as if it was someone we were caring for. 🌺💘”
Williams checked back into rehab in September. GC Images
She was released nearly two months later with her new publicist,
Shawn Zanotti, telling Page Six, “We are happy to report that Wendy
Williams is home and healing after being in a wellness facility since
August.”
Via Zanotti, Williams added, “Thank you to my fans for your love, support and many prayers, I am back and better than ever.”
Nursing home residents are increasingly spending time in rehabilitation
treatment during the last days of their lives, subjected to potentially
unnecessary therapy that reaps significant financial benefits
for cash-strapped facilities, a study shows.
The proportion of nursing home residents who received “ultrahigh
intensity” rehabilitation increased by 65 percent from October 2012 to
April 2016, according to research published
this month by the University of Rochester. Medicare defines “very high”
therapy as almost nine hours per week, and “ultrahigh” therapy as more
than 12 hours per week. Some residents were found to have been treated
with the highest concentration of rehabilitation during their last week
of life.
The study analyzed data from 647 New York-based nursing home
facilities and 55,691 long-stay decedent residents, with a specific
focus on those who received very high to ultrahigh rehabilitation
services—including physical, occupational and speech therapy—during the
last 30 days of their life. Such treatments garner the biggest payouts
from insurers. The study sourced data from New York nursing homes’
Minimum Data Set assessments, which track a patient’s health status and
socio-demographics, as well as the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Nursing Home Compare website.
The findings raise questions about financial motives, said
Helena Temkin-Greener, the lead author of the study and a professor at
the University of Rochester Medical Center Department of Public Health
Sciences. Medicare, a federal insurance program, doles out lofty reimbursement checks to nursing
homes with patients facing the most complex and
time-intensive rehabilitation. Temkin-Greener said for-profit nursing
homes were more than two times as likely to use high to ultrahigh
intensity therapy than were nonprofit homes.
“There’s
a possibility that nursing homes know a patient is approaching end of
life, but the financial pressures are so high that they use these
treatments so they can maximize revenue,” she said. Alternatively, “if
it’s being driven by a failure to recognize that a resident is
approaching end-of-life, then it calls for improving the skills of
nursing home teams.”
The
New York State Department of Health, the Office of the New York
Attorney General, and the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services didn’t return requests for comment.
“It is important for [skilled nursing facility] providers and
their care teams to consider the risk-benefit of potential therapy
interventions and dosage relative to the resident’s current health
status,” said Daniel Ciolek, associate vice president of therapy
advocacy at the American Health Care Association, which represents most
of the country’s for-profit nursing homes. Ciolek noted the AHCA has
long promoted efforts to redesign the skilled-nursing facility payment
system to “be based on care needs, rather than service delivery.”
Associations
representing nonprofit nursing homes agreed. “Reimbursement policy
should be driven by what it costs to provide high-quality care to all
Medicare beneficiaries,” said Aaron Tripp, the director of long-term
care policy and analytics at LeadingAge, an organization that represents
more than 2,000 nonprofit nursing homes. “If someone comes into a
skilled nursing home facility with high degrees of medical
complexity but not in need of rehab, they shouldn’t be at a disadvantage
because the system provides incentives for patients in need of high
therapy.” LeadingAge has criticized the current patient-classification
system, which determines reimbursement levels for skilled nursing
facilities (SNF), since it was rolled out in 2010.
Ciolek pushed back against the new study’s methodology, which
he said defined a very narrow SNF population of long-stay residents. He
said the study gives a false impression that the findings apply to all
SNF admissions. Temkin-Greener said the research “clearly focused on
long-term decedent residents for whom high-intensity therapy delivered
at the end of life is not indicated. However, with about 30 percent of
all Americans dying in nursing homes, this can hardly be described as a
‘very narrow SNF population.’”
The study of New York facilities
doesn’t bode well for how nursing homes throughout the U.S. are treating
dying residents—given that most states have less stringent nursing home
regulatory oversight than New York. “This is a nationwide problem,”
said Paul Ginsburg, director of the USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative
for Health Policy. “I would suspect this isn’t unique to New York, since
these distortions in our payment system are national.”
Rehabilitation
therapy has proven to be incredibly beneficial to patients
when properly prescribed, Temkin-Greener noted, but with
those approaching death, high-intensity treatment might be preventing
staff from providing more appropriate end-of-life care, such as hospice
or palliative care. It may also be accelerating the residents’ decline.
There’s
one particular piece of data from the study, she said, that points
toward nursing homes seeking to profit from helpless residents. “If
ultrahigh therapy is good for patients at end of life, why are only
for-profits using it?” Temkin-Greener asked. “These people are using
high-intensity services without justification.”
Forthcoming
Medicare payment and policy changes for skilled nursing facilities may
end the very incentives that encourage high-intensity treatment.
Starting Oct. 1, 2019, CMS will implement a new ‘Patient-Driven Payment Model’
that will determine payments based on a patient’s condition and health
needs, rather than on the amount of care provided or the intensity of
treatment. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, an independent U.S.
federal body, applauded the decision.
“It
will level the playing field, so there won’t be the financial incentive
to have therapy drive payment as much as it does today,” Tripp, of the
nonprofit industry group, said. “In a perfect world, the new model would
help mitigate this. But it’s too early to say.”
Nursing homes have seen the number of patients decline
in recent years. Occupancy is at roughly 85 percent, a 5 percent drop
from 10 years prior, according to recent data from National Investment
Center for Seniors Housing and Care. About one in five beds in a
skilled-nursing home goes unused. Meanwhile, nursing homes are closing at unprecedented rates across the country.
Ginsburg
said the decline in occupancy isn’t likely to be contributing to the
increase in high-intensity treatment. “It doesn’t matter if the beds are
empty or not,” he said. “The incentives to do too much rehabilitation
exist whether a facility is under- or over-occupied.”
Jack Halpern is the CEO of the New York City-based "My Elder Advocate, LLC". The organization provides advocacy services and helps seniors with issues such as eviction prevention, nursing home or assisted living placement and long term care planning.
In March, Mr. Halpern was showcased in the episode "Home Health Aides from Hell", which will be the focus of discussion for members of the New York State Standing Committee on Aging during its next legislative session, as confirmed by Senator Joseph Addabbo, Jr., who serves on the committee.
Mr. Halpern recently asked The G-Man Interviews to meet with him to discuss what he described as a dangerous trend – in New York nursing homes and those in other states – that will lead to the evictions or deaths of Alzheimer’s and dementia residents who need and rely on long term care.
The interview was conducted on May 22nd at My Elder Advocate’s Brooklyn office.
