Category Archives: Carers
Telehealth costs more than conventional treatment
Budget for NHS cost-cutting scheme to triple
A cost-cutting government scheme to monitor millions of NHS patients remotely in their homes is three times more expensive than expected, and is unlikely to save the predicted £1.2 billion a year, a study has found.
By Melanie Hall
One of the Coalition’s key health ambitions — to treat three million people with long-term conditions remotely — would cost £92,000 per patient, way above the £30,000 threshold set by the medical regulator, according to research published in the British Medical Journal.
The Department of Health has promoted the “telehealth” scheme, which would involve installing machines in patients’ homes to monitor their conditions and send results electronically to doctors, as a money-saving measure that also improves quality of life and reduces emergency hospital admissions, GP appointments and visits to accident and emergency departments.
However, a trial study of almost 1,000 patients already monitored in this way found that telehealth costs more than conventional treatment.
Weaving the words of dementia patients into poetry
Words of dementia sufferers woven into poetry by Susanna Howard
Saturday 23 March 2013
A poet is working with dementia patients to
weave their words into poetry. Susanna Howard, sits with them, often in silence,
jotting down whatever words they utter, and then uses only these utterances to
put a poem together for her collections, Living Words.
The results are poignant and profoundly emotional. At times, they also hint at the failings in our care system. “So many people are saying they want to be cared for and how to be cared for, that they are not listened to, that they are not heard. They are saying ‘this is what I want. This is what I need’,” says Howard.
She works with the terminal patients as well as the elderly, and says healing through words can’t be underestimated. Her refreshing approach exposes the lie behind the cliche of dementia as the “silent” living death. “I think we have a wealth of words inside us throughout our lives and when you have dementia, they are still inside you”, she says.
Howard, whose work has been funded by the Arts Council in the past, has created an innovative collection of poetry books in collaboration with dementia suffers, even though with advanced states of the degenerative illness.
Poems from a recent residency, staged in collaboration with EnglishPEN, can be viewed on 9 April at Europe House, in London.
Concert orchestra is in tune with Alzheimer’s
Concert orchestra is in tune with Alzheimer’s
A club which helps dementia sufferers recall old memories is being tuned to perfection with the help of the BBC Concert Orchestra.
For three dates only, four instrumentalists will be providing musical accompaniment to the workshops which not only provide stimulating experiences for Alzheimer’s patients, but also offer much-needed support and social opportunities for them and their carers.
Singing For The Brain, an initiative from the Alzheimer’s Society, has been running classes in Hemel Hempstead for around two years. There are more than 11,000 people in Hertfordshire living with dementia today and across the UK the figure tops 820,000.
The foundation for the innovative project lies in groundbreaking research into the effects of music on the brain.
chenrezig 
annie 
JaneJ 