About 45 of the 144 U.S. medical schools offer significant geriatrics curricula, he noted, but “just because they have a program doesn't mean they require students to go through it.”
Dr. Levenson sees that as a growing problem, because thousands of physicians who are providing care to geriatric patients “really don't know what they're doing … and create problems that have to be cleaned up by someone else.”
On the political front, physicians cannot just wait for events to unfold, Dr. Lichtenfeld said. “They need to step up to the plate and complete these surveys [about reimbursement], or we're dead in the water.”
Nor can physicians expect help from the patients themselves, Dr. Altbuch noted. “Nursing home patients don't vote and they have no political clout, and politicians know this.”
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