How To Choose The Best Nursing Home For Your Aging Parent

For the past several decades it has not been unusual for every member of a family to go to work in order to make enough money to cover the family's cost of living. And now, especially since the economy has been faltering, it has become even more important for many families to pool their resources.

Consequently, when one of their parents ages and needs someone to help them throughout the day, there is often no family member available who would be able to stay at home in order to care for that parent.

At times like these, especially if their parent suffers from a debilitating disease, one of the available options that these families need to consider is a nursing home, which is also sometimes called a long term care facility.

If you find yourself in this situation you have probably realized that you will have to gather quite a bit of information and make a number of educated decisions before you put your parent into a long term care facility. In this article we will look at a number of considerations before you put one of your parents into a nursing home.

State and federal laws have set standards that long term care facilities need to meet. State regulatory agencies (in most instances the Department of Health) will not issue a license to operate a nursing home unless that home complies with the minimum standards.

However, even if a long term facility meets the minimum standards it may not be the right place for your parent.

The majority of us would want the facility to have standards that are far above the minimum set by law. Because you want your parent to get the best care possible it's very important that you personally check out any nursing facility that you are considering.

When you visit the facilities you will need to find out their monthly charge for care. Since monthly charges alone can be more than $6,000 it is very important to find out the services that areincluded in the monthly charge. In addition, find out which services would require additional payments and how much those payments are.

In addition, you should ascertain whether the long term care facility is certified under Medicare or Medicaid.

Medicare only pays for care in a nursing home if the care commences within thirty days of a hospital stay. And Medicare pays for the entire cost of skilled nursing only for the first twenty days. After that Medicare will pay a percentage of their costs for up to one hundred days. After the hundredth day the nursing home resident will have to pay for the cost of their stay in the home.

And during your visit you should be aware of any indications of nursing home abuse. Although they seem to be few and far between, there are actually a lot of long term care facilities that take very good care of their residents.

On the other hand, if one of your elderly relatives lives in a long term care facility and you suspect nursing care abuse then you should contact a nursing home abuse lawyer.


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And to find an experienced and caring Nursing Home Abuse Lawyer go to http://www.sokolovelaw.com/legal-help/nursing-home-abuse/

Wendy Moyer on behalf of Sokolove Law.