Medicaid planning attorneys are here to help you make sure you can get the nursing home care you may come to require as you get older or if you get sick. There’s a good chance of ending up in a nursing home, as around 70 percent of people who reach the age of 65 will need at least some care in a home during the rest of their lifetimes. You don’t want your family scrambling to find a care facility and figure out how to pay for it at the time when you’ve just suffered a medical health crisis. Instead, you should work with professionals now to make sure you have a good plan in place for getting quality care. 
Unsworth LaPlante, PLLC can help you to take the necessary steps to ensure you end up a nursing home where you will have the highest possible quality of life. To find out more about the way our Medicaid planning attorneys can help you, give us a call today. You can also read on to check out some key tips for creating a plan for nursing home care.
Tips for Making Sure You Get High Quality Nursing Home Care
To make sure you get high quality nursing home care if you need to move to a nursing home as a senior:
- Create a plan in advance: While many seniors make a decision over time to move to a nursing home as their health declines, it’s also common for seniors to be discharged from the hospital after a stroke, fall, or other incident and to need nursing home care right away. In emergency situations, you don’t want your loved ones scrambling to try to find a facility without proper time to research. It’s best if you have a plan before you need it.
- Research facilities offering different kinds of service: For example, there may be a place you can move into while still independent that has a separate wing if you need more intensive nursing home care. This type of transition living makes it easier for you to get the help you need at all phases of your life as a senior.
- Use tools to find out about a nursing home’s reputation: Medicare’s Nursing Home Compare Tool is a very helpful tool that provides information on nursing homes. You can find out ratings and past problems at particular nursing homes or look at many nursing homes in your geographic area to find one that has received good reviews.
- Make a plan for care to be paid for: This is one of the most important steps to take due to the high costs of care and the fact Medicare and health insurance pay only for skilled nursing care and only under limited circumstances. The kind of care needed by most seniors is called custodial care and it’s not covered. Medicaid pays for custodial care, but you have to have limited assets to qualify for means-tested Medicaid so most people don’t get covered until after impoverishing themselves. Creating an asset protection plan to ensure you get Medicaid when you need nursing home care can help you preserve the chance to leave a legacy.
- Review nursing home admissions paperwork: If you’ve chosen a care facility you like where you’d want to live if you became unable to live alone, you should make certain to review their nursing home admissions paperwork including any contracts that must be signed by patients or by people acting on behalf of incapacitated patient’s. If the admissions contract contains an arbitration clause, the nursing home as curtailed your right to file a civil lawsuit in the event of abuse or neglect — which is a big limitation on your rights that you need to be aware of.
There may also be other steps that you need to take specific to your situation. You should not wait to work with an experienced attorney to get a nursing home plan in place, as you never know when something might happen to you that necessitates you receive care.
Getting Help from Medicaid Planning Attorneys
Medicaid planning attorneys at Unsworth LaPlante, PLLC are ready to help you to use all of the available legal tools in your power to ensure you get high quality care and that you can pay for the care you need. To find out more about how our firm can provide help related to nursing home care or hospice are, join us for a free seminar. You can also give us a call at (802) 879-7133 or contact us online today to learn more about the assistance our firm can offer.
Ellen LaPlante
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