Contacting Local Nursing Homes
When selecting a nursing home for your elderly relative, look for one located close to family and friends. A good location makes it possible for a nursing home resident to receive visitors often.
We recommend that you call local nursing homes and ask about bed availability, staffing, licensing, certification, resident activities, and if needed, allowance for special care. Is cost an issue for you? About seven out of ten nursing home residents use Medicaid to make their payments. Find out if the facility is certified to take Medicaid and Medicare patients. California residents will want to check into Medi–Cal certification. Other means of paying for service include personal funds, long–term care insurance, Medicare supplemental insurance, and Medicare. Although Medicare does not pay for long–term nursing home stays, it will pay for short periods of skilled nursing care when a patient has been in the hospital and needs continued care.
Consult Nursing Home Compare, a database of licensed nursing homes that are certified to take Medicaid and Medicare. Organized by both facility name and geographic area, the database provides detailed information including facility ownership, number of beds, the health condition of residents (e.g. bedsores, incontinence, mobility), the use of physical restraints on residents, staff size and working hours, and violations uncovered during investigations and annual inspections. The list of violations may not be up–to–date and includes some inaccuracies, according to a report published in December, 2005, by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Therefore, you may want to use the Nursing Home Compare web site mainly as a starting point for your research.
California residents should check Nursing Home Search, which provides quality ratings for each state nursing home. The indicators are staffing levels, clinical performance measures, complaint ratings, wages, and the percent of total amounts spent on care. California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform provides similar information through its California Nursing Home Guide.
For more tips about nursing home selection, see Visiting a Facility and Signs of a Good Nursing Home.
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