Life Care ready to open Ooltewah rehab center

Three years after shuttering an aging nursing home in Orchard Knob, Life Care Centers of America is shifting most of that licensed capacity to a new $16 million rehabilitation facility opening next month in Ooltewah.

"We're opening a beautiful facility at a highly visible site," said Beecher Hunter, president of Life Care Centers of America, the nation's biggest privately owned chain of nursing homes. "Given the proximity of this center to our Cleveland headquarters, it's almost a signature facility for us."

The 120-bed Life Care Center of Ooltewah bears little resemblance to the former 153-bed nursing home on North Highland Park Avenue that Life Care closed in November 2009 after state health inspectors cited the facility for numerous problems. The new Ooltewah center at Snow Hill and Mountain View Roads includes a high-tech rehabilitation gym, courtyards with water fountains and gardens, wood-paneled library, a private dining room with linen-covered tables, a beauty salon and spa and a doctor's suite where an inhouse physician provides medical care.

Life Care is opening the Ooltewah facility next month and has begun recruiting the first of what is expects will eventually be up to 150 employees for the center.

Adjacent to the 75,562-square-foot, single-story nursing home, an affiliate company of Life Care Centers, Century Park Associates, is building a three-story assisted living center with 100 units.

The new Ooltewah nursing home is the fourth new center Life Care Centers has opened in Tennessee in two years. Life Care opened a 108-bed nursing home and rehabilitation facility in January 2011 in Hixson and shortly after added two other centers in Nashville.

Nationwide, Life Care Centers, which celebrates its 43rd anniversary this month, operates 220 nursing homes in 28 states and employs more than 22,000 employees, Hunter said.

Scott Goins, the executive director for the new Ooltewah facility, said workers are putting the finishing touches on the complex and patients should start moving in in three weeks. He hopes to have the facility 60 percent occupied by the end of the year and full within a couple of years similar to Life Care's experience at its new Hixson facility.

"We've tried to create a very welcoming, home-like atmosphere here," he said.

The new director of the Ooltewah complex returned to Life Care Centers, where he previously worked for 10 years, after working for eight years for the 39-unit Grace Healthcare chain in Chattanooga.

"Life Care is kind of like home to me, and the opportunity to be a beautifal facility like this is truly a blessing," he said.

Most patients at the new Ooltewah facility will be on rehabilitation programs for no more than three months. At a similar Life Care Center in Hixson, the average length of stay is 37 days and most patients are covered by Medicare or private insurance plans.

The new gym includes a NASA-developed Ultra G machine that allows patients to gain strength and walking abilities on a low impact treadmill system. The device is similar to an AquaCiser used for rehab, except the Ultra G uses air instead of water so those recovering from surgery or wounds are able to use the machine without risk of infection.

The Ooltewah complex also includes high-tech exercise equipment in its 4,100-square-foot gym, and the facility has diverse walking paths, kitchen and bathroom settings and other environments to help patients learn how to take care of themselves to return to a home or assisted living facility.

Life Care was sued last fall by the federal government for allegedly making Medicare claims for unnecessary therapy services, but the company said it "strongly disagrees with the allegations" and contends that its rehabilitation programs actually save the government money.

Life Care is one of the first companies to use a new Tennessee law to allow for inhouse physician care at a nursing home for patients who opt to get such care from a doctor stationed at the facility. Hunter said having a full-time physician at a center in Florida since 2009 helped has helped to cut the number of patients who must go back to a hospital from 43 percent down to only 8 percent.

"We think it improves care, and is much more convenient for our patients," Hunter said.

The new Ooltewah center is only a few miles from another Life Care facility in Collegedale and the new Century Park assisted living center is within a couple miles of that company's Greenbriar Cove in Ooltewah.

"This is the fastest growing area in this whole region and with the access of I-75 here this facility should attract those needing rehabilitation from a wide area," Goins said.

'A Life In Friendships' Is A Life Well-Lived

You know how sometimes in life you make a friend, and at first you want to talk to her all the time, feverishly telling her details that, by their very personal nature, will bind you to this other person forever, or so you hope? But inevitably, of course, friendships shift and change and become something different from what they initially seemed.

I think books can undergo a similar transformation. You start reading a book thinking it's going to be one thing and one thing only, but after a while you realize it's gradually become something else, too. And so you feel a complicated set of emotions that replace your initial one-note purity.

I sort of felt this way about Susanna Sonnenberg's memoir She Matters: A Life in Friendships. Initially, I found myself drawn right in to the author's friendship vortex, fascinated by the knowing observations and beautiful writing she's applied to this most compelling of subjects. Here's Sonnenberg writing about an intense summer camp friendship, described to Judy Blume perfection:

"She stood next to me and we held in our stomachs when Greg La Rosa ambled by and said, 'Hi.' She explained marshmallow spread as we sat down with trays of Fluffernutter sandwiches ... She made me a peach-pit ring, and I made her a peach-pit ring.

"On my last day we said, 'How can I live without you?' "

What surprised me in this memoir was that, as the narrator gets older, her friends sometimes reveal that they certainly can live without her. There are bad, raw friendship breakups in this book. In one scene, Sonnenberg receives a letter from a girl who had been her college roommate 25 years earlier: "What she remembered of our acquaintance was that she hated me," Sonnenberg says.

And as a young mother, after a relaxed lunch with a friend, Sonnenberg gets an email that has the bluntness of a wartime telegram: "I can't be friends with you anymore," the woman says. And in yet another encounter, a vulnerable Sonnenberg asks a friend if she and her boys can come over that evening. The friend puts her off, asking to do it another night. Sonnenberg eventually confronts her, saying how hard it had been for her to ask for something specific.

"Well," [the friend] says, "my time."

To which Sonnenberg replies, "But I should count!"

That line serves as the heart of this book, because of course the author does count — not only to her friends, at least much of the time — but also to her readers, who will surely admire her honesty, intelligence and lack of vanity, and be occasionally taken aback by her unrelenting intensity. As a result, the book becomes not only what I initially thought it was — an affecting, emotional and nostalgic look at the ways in which women form bonds — but also just as much a study of the boundary issues that can crop up between friends and threaten to ruin everything.


Susanna Sonnenberg is the author of a previous memoir called Her Last Death.

Marion Ettlinger/Courtesy of Scriber
Sonnenberg, who's aware of her passions and ambivalences, and doesn't hide from them, made me think about what a friendship is, anyway. After all, you're not related to these people, you're not married to them (although in one compelling episode, she does become lovers with a friend), so what exactly do you owe each other? What are the rules? And why do they keep changing all the time?

It should also be mentioned that the author's first book was also a memoir, about her dramatic, unstable, druggy mother, one of those people about whom other people probably said, "She was larger than life." A life-sized mother would have been just fine, for it's easy to see how having such an overwhelming mother might not only damage a daughter's friendship here and there, but also heighten a daughter's need for caretaking, love and attention from all female friends, forever. The author certainly is well aware of this, and she never tries to hide it, but simply gets it all down on paper.

But here's the funny thing: Had Susanna Sonnenberg written an empowering look at all the gentle women friends she's loved over the years, her book wouldn't have been interesting at all. Instead, I think, she's written something that interests, exhausts, moves, perplexes, impresses and yes, matters.

End-of-life care: 'Shortfall in NHS services'

There is a shortage of specialist end-of-life care in England, causing unnecessary suffering, experts say.

People dying with the most complex conditions, such as cancer, dementia and heart and liver failure often need support from a range of professionals.

But a report - produced by end-of-life doctors and nurses - said many were going without the help they needed.

The Department of Health said it a new system for funding palliative care is expected to be in place by 2015.

Specialist end-of-life care requires teams of professionals, including doctors, nurses, social workers, psychologists and pharmacists to work together to help manage pain and disability in the final year of life and ensure patients are treated with dignity and compassion.

As well as helping to achieve as comfortable a death as possible, the support can also reduce costs to the NHS by keeping people out of hospital, said the report, produced by a host of specialist bodies including the Association of Palliative Medicine and Marie Curie Cancer Care.

'Paralysis'
Not everyone who dies needs such help as some deaths are sudden or unexpected.

Continue reading the main story
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Palliative care has the ability to save the NHS money and improve the care of patients”

Dr David Brooks
Association of Palliative Medicine
But the ageing population means there is a growing number of people with complex, long-term problems that need carefully managing at the end of life.

The report said it was estimated that between 160,000 to 170,000 people a year were currently receiving specialist end-of-life care.

The groups said this was a "significant" shortfall on the numbers who needed help. It said more than 350,000 people required some form of end-of-life care, the majority of whom would benefit from specialist care.

Dr David Brooks, vice-president of the Association of Palliative Medicine, said: "There is a shortfall in services that needs to be addressed. Palliative care has the ability to save the NHS money and improve the care of patients."

It comes after there has been mounting concern about one part of end-of-life care, the Liverpool Care Pathway.

Complaints
At the end of last year there were suggestions the regime, which allows doctors to withdraw treatment in the last days of life, was being misused in places.

Relatives of dying patients had complained that their loved ones had been put on the pathway without consent.

Professionals working in the field had agreed to launch a review into how the system was working, but that was then put on hold when ministers said it should be done independently.

That review has yet to start, although the government is expected to announce details of it in the coming weeks.

Dr Brooks said the profession was keen to find out what had gone wrong, but he said the controversy and wait for the review had created a "bit of paralysis".

"It is important we get this right and tackle what was happening, but there is a little frustration it is taking some time."

A Department of Health spokesperson said: "People should receive the very best care possible, right up until the end of their lives.

"We have committed to developing a per-patient funding system for palliative care and our pilots are now under way, with plans to have the new system in place in 2015.

"In 2011, the independent Palliative Care Funding Review report identified a gap between need and provision of palliative care.

"We have already developed and started implementing an End of Life Care Strategy, which aims to raise awareness and standards of end of life care for all those who need it, whatever their condition and wherever they are being cared for.

"Commissioners need to be clear about what their local needs are, and commission the right services to meet them."

World Financial Group: Life Insurance Myths Lead to Gaps in Coverage

Though many consumers believe that they understand the potential benefits of life insurance coverage, a recent report notes that misinformation about life insurance abounds, which leads many consumers to obtain inadequate coverage. The study, reported by Insurance Networking News, lists several particular groups who are at risk for underinsurance: large families, unmarried parents, women, and individuals with common health afflictions such as asthma and depression. The study was noted by World Financial Group, Inc. (WFG).

WFG and its independent associates believe that it is important to educate clients about the different life insurance options available. Commenting on the study, WFG notes that it is best to know as much as you can about life insurance and be sure to understand your options when it comes to choosing coverage that is right for you and your current situation.

According to the report many consumers do not understand the life insurance options available to them. In particular, many consumers believe that the cost of life insurance is as much as three times the price of what it truly is, which is a major factor in coverage gaps among particular consumer groups.

The study finds that life insurance coverage gaps are common among large families, in which only one parent may carry coverage and, in some cases, neither parent is covered. The reasons for this gap in coverage are misinformation about the cost of life insurance, paired with low incomes and/or the high expenses of raising children. The study also finds that many women, including married women, lack adequate coverage. In fact, 43 percent of married mothers do not have life insurance at all.

WFG's independent associates educate individuals and families about all aspects of life insurance and believe in providing consumers with the information they need to make educated choices.

The study noted in this release was reported by Insurance Networking News on December 17, 2012.

World Financial Group, Inc. is a financial services marketing company whose affiliates offer a broad array of financial products and services. WFG's independent associates, located throughout North America, strive to help individuals and families often overlooked by the financial services industry to plan for their financial futures, advocating the power of choice for clients through agreements with several of the financial and insurance industries' leading companies.

WFG is a business unit of the Life & Protection (L&P) Division of Transamerica. Through L&P, the Transamerica companies offer a wide array of life and health protection solutions with a common purpose: to protect families and their dreams. With more than a century of experience, Transamerica has built a reputation on solid management, sound decisions and consumer confidence.

'Life term till death will deter rape'

A minimum punishment of life imprisonment till death without any remission will be the best deterrent for rape rather than the present 10 years, former Bar Council of Delhi Chairman KC Mittal has said.

Sending a slew of suggestions to the three-member panel headed by former Chief Justice of India JS Verma, Mittal said punishment for eve-teasing, stalking, outraging the modesty, sexual harassment at workplace and kidnapping also must be made more stringent.

The Verma commission was appointed to recommend changes in anti-rape laws.
He said life imprisonment with remission in case of good behaviour should be made the maximum punishment for juveniles involved in heinous crimes. "Future scope for reformation should not be completely obviated," Mittal said.

He also suggested introduction of a GSM-based SOS system. The application helps an individual relay SOS signal to a central security room which can activate the nearest police van.

"Indian women today do not confine to traditional and conventional roles but play a crucial role in nation-building. They work day and night and even travel during odd hours and wait at bus stands which expose them to eve teasing, harassment and violence", he said.

Noting that safety and security of a woman was the prime duty of the state, he said offenders should be adequately punished so that it acts as deterrence for others as well. Mittal said CCTVs should be installed at all prominent places and male and female police should be on duty at public places.

Sun Life CEO Bets on Smaller Acquisitions for Growth

Sun Life Financial Inc. (SLF) rallied 40 percent last year as investors rewarded decisions to shed riskier assets and emphasize insurance and wealth management. Chief Executive Officer Dean Connor says the narrower focus can still boost earnings in 2013.

“This is a transformational change for Sun Life that substantially de-risks the company, strengthens our balance sheet and provides funding for smaller acquisitions that can move our strategy forward,” Connor said in an e-mail interview yesterday.
Enlarge image Sun Life Financial Inc. Chief Executive Officer Dean Connor

Sun Life Financial Inc. Chief Executive Officer Dean Connor said, “I think investors appreciate the clarity of the strategy and the speed of execution.” Photographer: Norm Betts/Bloomberg

Canada’s third-largest insurer agreed to sell its U.S. annuities unit to a firm owned by Guggenheim Partners LLC for $1.35 billion in December, reducing risks from exposure to U.S. equity markets while focusing on its North American benefits and wealth-management business and growing in Asia.

The divestitures helped send the stock to its best gains since the Toronto-based company soared 189 percent in 2000, its first year as a public company. It was the third-best performing North American insurance stock and the best Canadian financial stock in 2012.

“The challenge will be to grow their earnings,” said Ian Nakamoto, director of research with MacDougall MacDougall & MacTier Inc. in Toronto, which manages about C$4 billion ($4.1 billion), including Sun Life shares. “I’m not sure if they’ve got the capital to do something with the profit from the Guggenheim deal. Will they make acquisitions or will they plow it back into their existing line of business? They need to do something to balance out the fact that there will be less revenue from their risk assets.”
Growth Challenge

Sun Life rose 0.5 percent to C$27.14 at market close in Toronto.

Sun Life’s earnings have been volatile in recent years as global capital markets have fluctuated. Exposure to U.S. annuities increased obligations to clients as stock markets plunged during the financial crisis, while the lowest interest rates in at least half a century makes it harder for insurers to generate profit on funds backing policies.

The company recorded a net loss of C$300 million in 2011, down from a high of C$2.22 billion in 2007. Revenue was C$22.6 billion last year from C$27.6 billion in 2009. Sun Life will report profit of C$1.46 billion, or C$2.43 a share, for 2012, according to the average estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Revenue is estimated at C$20.3 billion.
Rising Rates

Earnings will be reduced by about 22 cents a share in 2013 after the sale of the annuities business, the company said. While the business generated 10 percent of Sun Life’s earnings, it also produced 50 percent of its equity risk and 35 percent of its interest risk, said Connor, who took over as CEO in December 2011.

“We see good organic opportunities in each of our four pillars of growth -- Canada, U.S. group benefits and voluntary benefits, asset management and Asia,” Connor said in the e- mail. “I think investors appreciate the clarity of the strategy and the speed of execution.”

Sun Life shares outpaced Manulife Financial Corp. (MFC) and Great-West Lifeco Inc. (GWO), the largest and second-largest Canadian insurers and was third in the North American market, behind American International Group Inc. (AIG) and Allstate Corp. (ALL)

Rising interest rates will lead to higher returns for Sun Life because of its fixed-income heavy portfolio, Craig Fehr, Canadian market strategist with Edward Jones & Co., said on the phone from St. Louis. Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney reiterated Dec. 4 that he may raise interest rates as the economic expansion progresses, though economists do not expect an increase from the 1 percent benchmark rate in 2013, according to a Bloomberg survey.
Wake-up Call

Fehr rates the stock a buy, as does TD Newcrest Inc., while Credit Suisse rates it outperform, the equivalent of a buy. Eleven analysts say hold the stock and three say sell, according to ratings compiled by to Bloomberg.

Not all analysts have applauded Sun Life’s moves away from capital markets. Manulife will replace Sun Life as the best- performing insurer in Canada in the next six months as assets tied to global growth gain in the new year, said Bob Decker, who manages investments in financial companies at Aurion Capital in Toronto.

“The removal of some of the growth component of Sun Life was a wake-up call that this is a structurally different business than it used to be and quite difficult to grow in an environment of low interest rates,” Decker said in a phone interview. “2013 should be different because interest rates are going to rise and we’ll see a strong rally in equity markets. Sun Life may miss out on the benefits of that.”
Hedging Instead

Aurion, which manages about C$5.5 billion, sold its Sun Life shares around the time of its U.S. annuities sale. The insurer’s stock slipped 3.9 percent on Dec. 17 when the deal was announced. Decker manages Manulife shares.

Manulife has aggressively hedged its exposure to equity markets and interest rates, achieving hedging targets two years ahead of a 2014 goal last quarter.

“Unfortunately Sun Life can’t go right back to their acquisitive ways once they’ve signaled to the market that they’re shedding riskier businesses,” Decker said.

The sale of the U.S. annuities business, which Connor said is expected to close in the second quarter of 2013, will leave them with about C$1.9 billion in cash at its holding company following the transaction.
Right Acquisitions

Sun Life doesn’t “need acquisitions to grow,” Connor said. The company expanded its asset management capabilities in China in 2012 with the creation of Sun Life Everbright Insurance Asset Management Co. and created a new life insurer in Vietnam, PVI Sun Life, in partnership with PVI, a property and casualty insurer in the country.

“But the right acquisitions can also create value for shareholders,” he said. The company made a small acquisition in the Philippines in 2011 that included a bank distribution relationship. “The first full year of sales and profitability are encouraging.”

In Canada, the company has positions in group benefits and pensions and individual insurance. MFS Investment Management, the company’s Boston-based asset-management subsidiary, “is firing on all cylinders” with a record US$303 billion under management as of the third quarter, Connor said.

Sun Life will boost profit from acquiring wealth management units in deals under C$500 million, according to Peter Routledge, analyst at National Bank Financial.
Drank Kool-Aid

“I hope they stay away from the U.S. and invest in Canadian wealth management assets,” he said in a phone interview from Vancouver. “Everyone drank the Kool-Aid that ‘we have to be a big North American life insurer, get our name on a football stadium’ and Connor was unsentimental when he came on board. And in the end it worked to the company’s benefit.”

Sun Life needs to rely on acquisitions and wealth management for growth since the “best-case scenario” for life insurance companies right now is a rate hike in mid-2014, Routledge said.

“I don’t think there will be many headlines coming out of the company next year -- and that’s a good thing,” Nakamoto said. “Investors will be worrying less about the stock. This year was about setting the course and next year will be keeping on that course.”

Pro-Life and Feminism Aren’t Mutually Exclusive

From its early beginnings, feminism was a young women’s movement. Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul, Charlotte Lozier and so many others began their suffragist work in their 20s. These women — the original feminists — understood that the rights of women cannot be built on the broken backs of unborn children. Anthony called abortion “child murder.” Paul, author of the original 1923 Equal Rights Amendment, said that “abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women.”

So the pro-life movement hasn’t changed the meaning of feminism, as has been suggested. It was the neo-feminists of the 1960s and ’70s who asked women to prize abortion as the pathway to equality.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, along with a group of mostly Democratic women, started the Susan B. Anthony List in 1992, the so-called Year of the Woman, when numerous pro-choice women were elected to Congress. Dannenfelser, then in her mid-20s, saw a need to support more pro-life women running for elected office. Twenty years since the organization’s founding, we now have two pro-life women in the Senate, 17 in the House, four in governorships and hundreds more in state legislatures.

Pro-life feminism has captivated a new generation of young women who reject the illusion that to be pro-woman is to be pro-choice. Gallup polling showed that among 18-to-29-year-olds, there was a 5% increase in those labeling themselves “pro-life” between 2007–08 and 2009–10. The past few years have seen the emergence of young leaders like Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life of America, who is responsible for organizing more than 675 pro-life groups on college campuses across the nation, and Lila Rose of Live Action, whose undercover video work has forced the abortion industry to confront and amend practices it cannot defend, as well as dozens of other future leaders who have assisted our organization as staff members and interns. During the past two summers we’ve had young female leaders join the SBA List from Stanford, Georgetown, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the University of California, Berkeley. These passionate defenders of women and unborn children return to their campuses ready to lead pro-life groups and educate their classmates on the tragedy of abortion.

Not only does this young generation of pro-life women shun the notion that abortion somehow liberates women; it views abortion as the civil- and human-rights cause of our day. Abortion is an injustice that permeates our society. Forty years after Roe v. Wade, we realize that a third of our peers are not here to share our progress and our hopes. It is our loss as well as theirs.

In his letter from a Birmingham, Ala., jail, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” It is in this same spirit of King and the original feminists that young pro-life women are rising up in increasing numbers to say abortion is a radical injustice that affects us all and must end. Achieving this will require more efforts to extend our understanding of the equal rights of the disabled unborn, prevent rape and make this crime against women a thing of the past, expand adoption and make the benefits of modern prenatal care and specialties like fetal surgery more available, so that even younger and sicker children can be spared an early death.

Our fight transcends elections and legislative battles because our fight is in our hearts. This is why, 40 years after Roe, our movement is still growing. We won’t give up; we can’t give up. Our fight is for life.