Senior Voice -

Dear readers, it's time to say goodbye. I will retire next month and hand off the reins to a new Long Term Care Ombudsman. It has been a real privilege to hold this position. I've got the best staff...

In the last 30 days, the Ombudsman has received five complaints that seniors are being threatened with involuntary discharge from their assisted living homes. This is often a terrifying prospect to a...

I’ve been exchanging emails and phone calls with a woman who is taking care of her husband at home. As his Alzheimer’s progresses, her days and nights become more and more challenging. She never kno...

Research suggests that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender elders are disproportionately represented in long term care facilities because, compared to their heterosexual counterparts, LGBT elders...

Every time you visit your mom in the assisted living home, she complains she isn’t getting her medication. When you question staff, they show you the medication log and it seems to indicate she is g...

Judging by the complaints to the Long Term Care Ombudsman, many Medicare beneficiaries and their families do not realize they have rights during the hospital discharge process. These rights are meant...

When an aging parent begins to fail, adult children often must step in to make arrangements for care. The opportunities for family conflict are enormous. Old rivalries between siblings are...

Imagine your family is far away. Strangers bathe and dress you, but you’ve had a stroke, so it is hard to explain that your roommate is stealing your things. You’re a senior in a long term care hom...

If your low income housing complex was developed with federal loans or grants, the owner must comply with federal Civil Rights law, the Fair Housing Act, and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Under the...

We can judge a society by how it treats the weakest of its members. As the number of seniors with dementia rises rapidly, each of us should reflect on how we treat people disabled by Alzheimer’s or o...

There is a disconnect in the way we manage long term care for frail seniors. Nationally, we are moving toward taking seniors out of nursing homes and keeping them in the community, giving them more as...

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit o...

The current wisdom is that 70 percent of us will need long term care at some point. Alaska’s long term care is the most expensive in the nation. So long term care financing is on a lot of p...

When I lived in Bush Alaska, I used to love seeing the Native elders at the potlucks. They came from up and down the Yukon in all kinds of weather to sit together and share food and stories. As the...

For older Alaskans living on a fixed income, senior housing can be a great option. Sometimes, though, our office receives complaints about senior housing property managers who abuse their power,...

This month’s column is about retaliation, specifically homes that retaliate against residents who complain or who offend them in some way. Retaliation against a resident can be overt, but often it i...