New CMS head gets recess appointment

On Wednesday, July 7, President Obama appointed Dr. Donald M. Berwick as administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Dr. Berwick has served as a pediatrician at Harvard Community Health Plan, and has taught health policy as a professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. As president and co-founder of the Institute for Healthcare Improvements (IHI), Dr. Berwick worked to reduce hospital-acquired infections and deaths, and produced standards to improve health care quality.

Dr. Berwick’s term will last only through 2011 due to his appointment during Congressional recess, which bypassed the Senate confirmation process. The post had been vacant since October 2006.

CMS, which oversees the Medicare and Medicaid programs, plays a key role in health reform implementation.

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Clifton B. Kruse, Jr., Leading Elder Law Attorney, Dies at 74

Clifton B. Kruse , Jr., a revered elder law attorney who was admired as much for his kindness and generosity to fellow practitioners as for his grasp of the law, died December 30, 2008, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He was 74. The cause was complications from Alzheimer's disease. For many in the field, Kruse set the standard for all that an elder law attorney can and should be. One of elder law's founding fathers, he combined a gentlemanly charm, warmth and caring with one of the sharpest and most ethical of legal minds. Wrote Arizona elder law attorney Robert Fleming in a tribute , "In my third of a century of elder law practice I have never met another lawyer who managed to pull together sophistication, heartfelt empathy, intellectual rigor and courtly manner in the same fashion Clifton Kruse projected. He did it, to all appearances, effortlessly. He was a friend and mentor to many in the elder law community (I count myself among those legions)." Kruse was the e...

Knee Surgery OK for Octogenarians

Knee replacement surgery can improve the quality of life even for very elderly patients, according to a study presented at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) . The study found that patients in their 80s can benefit both physically and socially from knee replacement surgery, also called total knee arthroplasty (TKA), once thought too risky for the very elderly. “As patients are living longer, there is an upward trend in the demand for quality of life among the elderly population,” said Edsel Arandia, M.D., lead author of the study and an orthopaedic surgeon at Philippine Orthopaedic Center and a Fellow at Singapore General Hospital. “As patients age, debilitating diseases like arthritis of the knee begin to develop. We conducted this study to determine the viability of TKA in octogenarians and to learn whether their quality of life improves after TKA.” Dr. Arandia and his team reviewed data from 128 patients older than 80 years of age wh...

Harry's Law gets Medicaid Planning All Wrong

I usually enjoy David Kelley's crazy law-related television shows like Boston Legal and Harry's Law. They are great fun and often give some good portrayals of lawyers and legal issues. But, I'm always laughing at how a client comes in to the office in the morning and somehow they are in Court in the afternoon - sometimes with a jury there. It takes years to get into Court most of the time and at least several days to get a jury together and ready for a trial. But, I'll allow some literary license to TV to keep the story moving. But, I don't like it when they get the law completely wrong and especially when they have the lawyers participate in fraud. Last week's episode of Harry's Law got the Medicaid rules wrong, and put lawyers in a bad light. Let me explain. First, Kelley got Medicaid law all wrong. The couple in question only had a house and the husband needed nursing home care. The wife said she needed to get a divorce to save the house. This is wron...

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