Robert L. Kane - Böcker

Family Caregiving in the New Normal discusses how the drastic economic changes that have occurred over the past few years have precipitated a new conversation on how family care for older adults will evolve in the future.

This text summarizes the challenges and potential solutions scientists, policy makers, and clinical providers must address as they grapple with these changes, with a primary focus given to the elements that may impact how family caregiving is organized and addressed in subsequent decades, including sociodemographic trends like divorce, increased participation of women in the workforce, geographic mobility, fewer children in post-baby boom families, chronic illness trends, economic stressors, and the current policy environment.

A section on the support of caregivers includes technology-based solutions that examine existing models, personal health records, and mobile applications, big data issues, decision-making support, person-centered approaches, crowd-sourced caregiving such as blogs and personal websites that have galvanized caregivers, and new methods to combine paid and unpaid forms of care.

Provides a concise "roadmap" of the demographic, economic, health trends, and policy challenges facing family caregivers Presents potential solutions to caregiving so that scientists, policymakers, and clinical providers can best meet the needs of families and communities in the upcoming decades Includes in-depth, diverse stories of caregivers of persons with different diseases who share perspectives Covers person-centered care approaches to family caregiving that summarize effective community-based services of psychosocial intervention models Examines how existing efficacious models can more effectively reach and serve individual families

Neuropsychology as a field has been slow to embrace and exploit the potential offered by technology to either make the assessment process more efficient or to develop new capabilities that augment the assessment of cognition. The Role of Technology in Clinical Neuropsychology details current efforts to use technology to enhance cognitive assessment with an emphasis on developing expanded capabilities for clinical assessment. The first sections of the book provide an overview of current approaches to computerized assessment along with newer technologies to assess behavior. The next series of chapters explores the use of novel technologies and approaches in cognitive assessment as they relate to developments in telemedicine, mobile health, and remote monitoring including developing smart environments. While still largely office-based, health care is increasingly moving out of the office with an increased emphasis on connecting patients with providers, and providers with other providers, remotely. Chapters also address the use of technology to enhance cognitive rehabilitation by implementing conceptually-based games to teach cognitive strategies and virtual environments to measure outcomes. Next, the chapters explore the use of virtual reality and scenario-based assessment to capture critical aspects of performance not assessed by traditional means and the implementation of neurobiological metrics to enhance patient assessment. Chapters also address the use of imaging to better define cognitive skills and assessment methods along with the integration of cognitive assessment with imaging to define the functioning of brain networks. The final section of the book discusses the ethical and methodological considerations needed for adopting advanced technologies for neuropsychological assessment. Authored by numerous leading figures in the field of neuropsychology, this volume emphasizes the critical role that virtual environments, neuroimaging, and data analytics will play as clinical neuropsychology moves forward in the future.

In 1988 the World Health Organization convened an Expert Committee to identify the principles of policy for care of ageing populations of the world over the next decade. The Committee commissioned a series of background papers from an international body of experts to form the basis of its deliberations. This volume is a compilation of those papers. While the signs of ageing of populations is commonly assumed to be a problem restricted to the developed world, more than half the world's population of people aged 65 and over live in developing countries. The Committee therefore had to consider a wide range of issues including the applicability of models of care for the elderly in the developed world to less-developed nations.The book surveys common geriatric problems, issues about delivering health care and social services to older people, and policy issues with regard to improving care. The chapters are designed to provide practical, as well as theoretical, approaches to meeting the challenges of geriatric care.

Long-term care in the United States has taken the nursing home as its benchmark, but the monetary, social, and psychological costs of nursing home care are all too high. This book challenges the current dominance of nursing homes as the principal institution of long-term care. It offers a series of alternative models where both services and housing can be provided in a way that allows long-term consumers to enjoy dignified, "normal" lifestyles. It addresses the political and economic consequences of making this decision. The authors start with the premise that long-term care is designed to assist people who lack the capacity to function fully independently. They argue that no disabled person of any age should be required to forsake his/her humanity in exchange for care. The book rejects the artificial dichotomy between social and medical care, asserting that both play important roles in psychological and physical well-being of long-term care patients. The authors consider the need for competent and compassionate medicine and discuss the methods for improving both its coordination of care and its effectiveness. The book redefines the meaning of safety and protection in long-term care, and how this goal can be accomplished without sacrificing quality of living. As the new millenium and the aging of baby boomers approaches, more creative approaches to providing better long-term care are required. This volume outlines a useful framework for the provision ofeffective and humane community-based programs that are both feasible and affordable. It will be an invaluable guide for geriatricians, public health professionals, family physicians, nurses and others who care for elderly patients.

Conducting Health Outcomes Research serves as the definitive guide to successful investigation of health care outcomes and the key resource for ensuring quality care.As consumer, insurer and government demands for quality health care increase, the field of research required to measure such quality stands to grow exponentially. Conducting Health Outcomes Research brings together the practical, actionable information needed to conduct research on health outcomes, with the goal of measuring the quality of the care being delivered.The book details the methodology for performing successful research in this growing field: from formulating models, choosing study design, measuring and gathering data to assessing and presenting results. The text dually covers risk adjustment and the interplay of demographic, psychological and social factors.Conducting Health Outcomes Research answers the growing call for evidence-based practice, comparative effectiveness reviews and overall quality assurance in health care.

Chronic conditions such as arthritis, heart disease, and Parkinson disease are the principal cause of all sickness and death in the United States and represent the vast majority of health care expenditures. Although we now live in a world dominated by chronic conditions, health care is still organized around a commitment to treating acute illnesses. Meeting the Challenge of Chronic Illness examines current deficiencies in chronic illness care and explores ways to improve it. Addressing the challenges of shifting from the primacy of acute illnesses to the predominance of chronic conditions, the authors identify the components necessary to reorganize and reform health care: properly prepared health care workers; involved patients and families; appropriate use of new technologies, especially information systems; an appropriate role for prevention; and the creation of funding approaches that will provide necessary incentives. This book calls on policy makers, health care providers, and educators to address one of the greatest challenges facing the health care system.

The failure of long-term care is the country's best-kept embarrassing secret. Almost every adult in the United States will either enter a nursing home or have to deal with a parent or other relative who does. Studies show that 40 percent of all adults who live to age sixty-five will enter a nursing home before they die, while even more will use another form of long-term care. Part memoir, part practical guide, part prescription for change, It Shouldn't Be This Way is a unique look at the problems of long-term care. Robert L. Kane, a highly experienced physician and gerontologist, and his sister, Joan C. West, tell the painful story of what happened to their mother after she suffered a debilitating stroke and spent the last years of her life in rehabilitation, assisted-living facilities, and finally a nursing home. Along the way, her adult children encountered some professionals who were kind and considerate but also many frustrations - inadequate care and the need to hire private duty aides, as well as poor communication and lack of coordination throughout the system. The situation, they found, proved far more difficult than it needed to be. As the authors recount their mother's story, they impart various lessons they learned from each phase of the experience. They alert those who are confronting such situations for the first time about what they will likely face and how to approach the problems. Closing with a broader look at why long-term care is the way it is, they propose steps to make necessary reforms, including the development of national organizations to work for change. Their message to families, care professionals, and policy-makers could not be more urgent.