Resources for Integrated Care will host a webinar on April 18 on key medication issues for older adults who qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid, and the need for management and coordination among care team members and beneficiaries, reports the Administration for Community Living . Participants also will learn about effective strategies to empower individuals and their families to manage multiple medications. Participants will be able to define polypharmacy and the ramifications for beneficiary safety, name at least five classes of medications with a high risk of adverse reactions in older adults, identify challenges that beneficiaries and their family members may be confronted with when managing multiple medications, and define how each member of the care team can help with medication regimens. Registration for the webinar is available here .

The Department of Health and Human Services ' Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has issued the ONC Guide to Getting and Using your Health Records , a online resource for individuals, recipients, and caregivers. The guide notifies consumers about the value of health information, and offers individuals clear, actionable advice on how to access their health record, including offering tips through the process of accessing their records electronically; checking their record to ensure it is complete, correct, and up-to-date; and using their electronic health records, such as sharing their records to better coordinate their care and using apps and other digital technologies to better manage and improve their health. "It's important that consumers and their caregivers have access to their own health information so they can make decisions about their care and treatments," says National Coordinator for Health Information Technology Don Rucker. "This guide will help answer some of the questions that consumers may have when asking for their health information." Nearly half of Americans in 2017 who were offered access to an online medical record did not access it, often listing a perceived lack of need as one reason. Consumers may not understand their right under the HIPAA Privacy Rule to access their health data, or may be unaware of the benefits of accessing such information.

A study from the Baycrest Center for Geriatric Care published in Psychology and Aging suggests training programs can help combat memory deterioration if they are customized to an individual's specific memory difficulty, reports ScienceDaily . "One approach to memory intervention is to try and train underlying memory processes so individuals will see improvements in situations that require this mechanism," says University of Toronto Professor Nicole Anderson. "Our study focused on training one memory process, recollection, which typically deteriorates during aging." The results determined such training did significantly improve recollection, with senior participants' ability matching those of people in their 20s. These benefits also persisted when participants were retested three months later. However, older adults did not improve on any of the tasks that should have benefited from having better recollection, such as a memory test for recalling whether words were shown on a screen or heard through headphones. No participants reported any improvements to their memory. "For a long time, memory researchers viewed recollection as a single mechanism, but our work suggests that this is not the case," Anderson says. "Instead, it implies there may be many different types of recollection for different contexts connected to a memory, such as feelings felt at the time, the sounds in the area, or what a person sees at the time."

The establishment and maintenance of psychological safety with a cognitively diverse team can be achieved by setting up a psychologically safe environment to encourage cognitive diversity and focus various minds on effective strategy execution, report the Ashridge Business School's Alison Reynolds and the London Business School's David Lewis in the Harvard Business Review. "We need to be more curious, inquiring, experimental, and nurturing," they write. "We need to stop being hierarchical, directive, controlling, and conforming. It is not just the presence of the positive behaviors in the Generative quadrant that count, it is the corresponding absence of the negative behaviors." Reynolds and Lewis note hierarchical behavior is named one of the top five dominant behaviors 40 percent of the time in the non-generative quadrants, but cited only 15 percent of the time as a top behavior in the Generative quadrant. "This is not because the organizations in the Generative quadrant have a flatter structure — hierarchy is a fact of organizational life — but because hierarchy does not define their interactions," they say. "We see controlling cited 33 percent of the time as a top behavior in the non-generative quadrants compared with only 10 percent in the generative quadrant. We see directive cited 24 percent of the time as top behavior in the non-generative quadrants compared to only 5 percent in the generative."

Many Asian companies are behind in using pulse surveys to accumulate data from which to analyze their workforce, placing pressure on employers to maximize existing talent and retain them for as long as possible, reports EngageRocket CEO Chee Tung Leong in Forbes . He offers suggestions for deploying a successful pulse survey, starting with maintaining the human resources department's accountability by determining how often management reviews relevant operational data, and the scale of follow-up actions from such sessions. Leong also says a short pulse survey would help develop an organizational habit, using more than 30 questions for a quarterly survey and 15 to 20 for a monthly poll. This would allow HR and leadership interventions to be strategically targeted at areas in most need of them. The third step Leong suggests is communication. "A good place to start would be to frame the why behind the program," he writes. "Appealing to the genuine desire to make the workplace better and improve the lives of employees at work resonates, especially if it is sincere. Reinforcing this throughout the program by communicating results, actions taken, and experiments that succeed (and fail) is equally important. This builds trust, and creates a virtuous cycle of performance improvements and accountability that boosts productivity." The next step is to practice agile people management and responsiveness to business change, and the final step is to instill a habit and culture of regular feedback earlier rather than later.

The National Poll on Healthy Aging notes although few older adults use medical marijuana, the majority support its use if recommended by a doctor, reports ScienceDaily . The poll included 2,007 Americans between 50 and 80, and found 80 percent of respondents said they support allowing medical marijuana if recommended by a physician. Moreover, 66 percent agreed the government should do more to study the drug's health effects. More than 66 percent believed marijuana can ease pain, while about 50 percent thought prescription pain medications were more effective. Slightly less than 33 percent of respondents felt marijuana definitely provides pain relief, and 38 percent said it likely does. However, just 14 percent thought marijuana was more effective than prescription pain medication, while 48 percent did not and 38 percent believed the two were equally effective. Forty-one percent also thought it would be easier to control dosage with medication. Meanwhile, nearly half of those surveyed believed prescription pain medicines are more addictive than marijuana, and 57 percent said that such medications have more side effects than marijuana. "With medical marijuana already legal in 29 states and the District of Columbia, and other states considering legalizing this use or all use, this is an issue of interest to recipients, providers, and policymakers alike," says the University of Michigan's Preeti Malani.

A study published in Frontiers in Pharmacology suggests coffee or caffeine's use as a strategy to prevent dementia may at a certain point have the opposite effect, reports EurekAlert . The researchers performed the study with normal aging mice and familial Alzheimer's models. "The mice ... not only exhibit the typical cognitive problems but also a number of Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia (BPSD)-like symptoms, so it is a valuable model to address whether the benefits of caffeine will be able to compensate its putative negative effects," says Raquel Baeta-Corral with the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB) in Spain. The results of the study indicated that caffeine changes the behavior of healthy mice and exacerbates the neuropsychiatric symptoms of mice with Alzheimer's disease. The team found significant effects in the majority of variables studies, particularly in relation to neophobia, or a fear of everything new, anxiety-related behaviors, and emotional and cognitive flexibility. The increase in neophobia and anxiety-related behaviors worsened the BPSD-like profile in mice with Alzheimer's, while learning and memory derived little benefit from caffeine. "Our observations of adverse caffeine effects in an Alzheimer's disease model together with previous clinical observations suggest that an exacerbation of BPSD-like symptoms may partly interfere with the beneficial cognitive effects of caffeine," says UAB's Lydia Giménez-Llort. "These results are relevant when coffee-derived new potential treatments for dementia are to be devised and tested."

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has expanded the definition of "primarily health-related" benefits insurers can include in their Medicare Advantage policies, which would be added on top of traditional benefits, reports Kaiser Health News . "Medicare Advantage beneficiaries will have more supplemental benefits making it easier for them to lead healthier, more independent lives," says CMS Administrator Seema Verma. Advantage plans limit members to a provider network, and similar limitations may apply to the new benefits. CMS says insurers will be allowed to provide care and devices that prevent or treat illness or injuries, compensate for physical handicaps, address the psychological effects of illness or injuries, or reduce emergency medical care. Besides transportation to doctors' offices or better food options, some insurance experts note supplemental benefits could include modifications in beneficiaries' homes, such as installing grab bars in the bathroom, or aides to help with daily activities. "This will allow us to build off the existing benefits that we already have in place that are focused more on prevention of avoidable injuries or exacerbation of existing health conditions," notes Capital District Physicians' Health Plan's Alicia Kelley. Under the new rules, the new benefits must be "medically appropriate" and recommended by a licensed healthcare provider.

A study review published in Consumer Reports found virtually no concrete evidence that memory boosters can prevent or delay memory lapses, mild cognitive impairment, or dementia in older adults, reports the Washington Post . Decades of research have yet to demonstrate any clear benefits to popular memory enhancement supplements such as fish oils, B vitamins, and ginkgo biloba extract. For example, a 2012 study published in the Lancet Neurology found that among 2,854 older adults with memory problems, those who took ginkgo biloba extract twice daily for five years had no fewer cases of Alzheimer's than those who took a placebo. Meanwhile, a 2017 Government Accountability Office report analyzed hundreds of advertisements promoting memory-enhancing supplements online and identified 27 making what appeared to be illegal assertions about treating or preventing dementia and similar diseases. As alternatives to supplements, experts recommend first exercising the brain with reasoning and memory tasks, which might delay or slow cognitive decline. Also suggested is physical exercise, as well as blood pressure reduction.

In observation of National Public Health Week from April 2 to April 8, U.S. Surgeon General and Vice Admiral Jerome M. Adams is urging new alliances to enhance the country's health collaboratively, reports the Department of Health and Human Services . Adams notes American life expectancy has declined for the second consecutive year, marking the first time in 50 years that U.S. longevity has fallen. "As public health professionals, we have a unique opportunity to leverage our influence and leadership to forge stronger partnerships that can more effectively promote public health and prevention," he says. "I am committed to strengthening the connections among public health communities and forging new partnerships with non-traditional partners, including but not limited to the traditional business, law-enforcement, education, and faith-based communities. We cannot achieve our goals unless we are at the table together, sharing lessons learned and challenging each other to do more, to do better, and to do it together." Adams stresses, "When we are addressing issues that are important to improving our nation's health, we cannot operate in silos. Whether we are looking to improve our nation's health outcomes, improve our national security, or enhance a community's resilience, we need partnerships and collaboration. We can only change our future together."