A nursing home lawyer at Frank & Kraft will help you to plan ahead for getting quality care in a nursing home. There is around a 70 percent chance you’ll spend some time in a nursing home if you make it to age 65 or older, according to the Wall Street Journal. You want to be prepared in case you need care so you can live in a high-quality environment that maximizes your quality of life.
Unfortunately, high costs of nursing home care and an epidemic of elder abuse make it difficult to find the right nursing home situation for you. Far too many families wait until an emergency has arisen that necessitates a move to a nursing home and are left scrambling to find the right care facility at the very last minute.
You don’t want to end up in just any nursing home where there happens to be an available bed when you need it, so you should reach out to a nursing home lawyer at Frank & Kraft today to find out how to begin making a nursing home plan now.
Tips for Researching to Find the Right Nursing Home
You should start your research into your nursing home options before you need care, just in case you suffer an illness or an injury that makes you unable to live by yourself any longer. Making a plan for nursing care can be part of your incapacity planning process, which should also include naming someone to act on your behalf in the event of incapacity and creating advanced directives for healthcare.
When you begin researching nursing homes, you can use a variety of available tools and resources to check out the reputation of nursing homes in your area and to find a home that has favorable ratings and few or no past problems. Medicare’s nursing home compare tool is a powerful resource that will allow you to look at different care facilities in your local area and to find out information about their ratings. Every Medicare and Medicaid certified nursing home in the country is in the nursing home compare tool, so you will be able to learn a lot about different options.
When you have found care facilities that you think may be right for you, you can begin the process of reaching out to the homes where you may live. Go for visits to the nursing home at different times, including during meal time, to see the condition of the facility. Pay attention to the quality of the food, to whether or not residents seem happy, and to the ratio of residents to staff. Consider also the cleanliness of the care facility and whether it appears that the hygiene needs of the resident are being met.
Find out about the services that each different nursing home you are considering offers. Some care facilities offer more intensive help and support than others do. Other care facilities can specifically cater to people with specific conditions that need to be addressed, such as nursing homes with locked wards for patients who are suffering from dementia.
You should also have an attorney look over the nursing home admissions contract to make sure it is respectful of patients rights. Watch for arbitration clauses that would prevent you from suing nursing homes in the event of abuse or neglect, as these clauses have become common and can significantly curtail your rights.
You should also make a plan for how you are going to pay for the nursing care facility that you select. Nursing homes can be very costly and aren’t covered by most insurance. Medicare also won’t pay for a nursing home unless you need skilled nursing care, while most residents only need custodial care or basic help with activities of daily living. Medicaid pays for the kind of nursing home care you are likely to need, but you’ll be disqualified from coverage if you have financial resources unless you make a plan in advance to protect your assets and still get covered. Frank & Kraft can help you to make a Medicaid plan so you can get your care costs paid for.
Getting Help from A Nursing Home Lawyer
A nursing home lawyer at Frank & Kraft can offer you the assistance you need to research a home’s reputation, to review nursing home admissions paperwork and to take steps to ensure you are able to afford nursing home care in a high quality home of your choosing. To find out more about how a nursing home lawyer at our firm can assist you, give us a call today at 317-684-1100.
Mr. Kraft assists clients primarily in the areas of estate planning and administration, Medicaid planning, federal and state taxation, real estate and corporate law, bringing the added perspective of an accounting background to his work.
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