Dr. Lisa Furmanski, geriatrician, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, NH.

We look at a lot of what happens to older people as failures. Death is obviously the ultimate failure. But even steps along the way: hip fractures, going to a nursing home, developing a cancer, all of those things are thought to be bad news, failures, and not something to take a hold of and work with … And we haven’t really come to terms with the fact that this is what happens when people get older…

Finances are the biggest issue. I also think that even just the concept of the nursing home needs to be challenged and re-thought.