Melissa Bailey is a correspondent, Kaiser Health News.

The unintended consequences of keeping hospital patients in bed

Conditions
October 22, 2019

Dorothy Twigg was living on her own, cooking and walking without help until a dizzy spell landed her in the emergency room. She spent three days confined to a hospital bed, allowed to get up only to use a bedside commode. Twigg, who was in her 80s, was livid about being stuck in a bed with side rails and a motion sensor alarm, according to her cousin and caretaker, Melissa …

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The unintended consequences of keeping hospital patients in bed

Guarding against infection falls to families as care shifts to home

Conditions
September 27, 2017

Angela Cooper arrived home from work to discover her daughter’s temperature had spiked to 102 degrees — a sign that the teenager, who has cancer, had a potentially deadly bloodstream infection. As Cooper rushed her daughter to the hospital, her mind raced: Had she done something to cause the infection?

Cooper, who works at a Chevy dealership in Iowa, has no medical background. She is one of thousands of parents who …

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Guarding against infection falls to families as care shifts to home

Dying at home: The problem hospices have with stolen opioids

Meds
August 31, 2017

Nothing seemed to help the patient — and hospice staff didn’t know why.

They sent home more painkillers for weeks. But the elderly woman, who had severe dementia and incurable breast cancer, kept calling out in pain.

The answer came when the woman’s daughter, who was taking care of her at home, showed up in the emergency room with a life-threatening overdose of morphine and oxycodone. It turned out she was high …

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Dying at home: The problem hospices have with stolen opioids