Judith Graham - KFF Health News

Membership-based villages help arrange services for seniors — such as handyman help or transportation to appointments — and provide social connections . Despite great promise, they have been slow to expand.

Medicare has proposed limiting coverage of Aduhelm and several prominent groups representing patients and families are pressing to make it more widely available. But among individuals facing the disease, the outlook is more nuanced.

Home health and hospice agencies are experiencing extreme worker shortages, which means they can’t provide services to all the patients seeking care.

Ageism in health care settings, which can result in inappropriate or dangerous treatment, is getting new attention during the COVID pandemic.

The condition can be an early signal of Alzheimer’s but not always. Other health concerns could be causing thinking or memory problems, and the new drug, Aduhelm, would not be appropriate for those patients.

Far more older adults who perished with COVID lived outside of institutions. People with dementia and other severe neurological conditions, chronic kidney disease and immune deficiencies were hit hard.

The FDA approves new prescribing instructions for Aduhelm to address confusion over who should get the drug, saying it is appropriate for patients with early or mild Alzheimer’s.

Between 2 million and 4.4 million older adults are homebound and at extremely high risk of dying from COVID-19. Yet, they haven’t been recognized as a priority group for vaccines.

Long-term care residents’ participation in the vaccination effort is clouded by a significant complication: More than half have cognitive impairment or dementia.