My father is in Chicago and has had a stroke and fallen twice in a month. He is declining rapidly and I need to move him to GA. I am trying to find a way here for him and he will need help on the plane. I want to see if Medicare will cover a nurse to travel with him. He has both part A and B. If so how do I go about requesting the nurse? I have very limited time to get it all done so what ever info you have please share it with me
Do they have any links with specialist transport service providers, perhaps?
Googling "patient transfer from Chicago to Georgia" gets some promising results. Will it be doable for you even if Medicare won't cover it? You can get quotes online, and as these are medical transportation services there shouldn't be extra to pay.
Kamy rather than me sitting here like a lemon making silly guesses - ! - is your Dad in rehab? Are you working with his discharge team? Do you have somewhere for him to go?
You could contact a Geriatric Care Manager to see if someone would accompany dad. Though Medicare would not cover the cost of that either. Any cost would be paid by your dad.
And as guest said check into how Medicare will work once he is there. Maybe an elder law attorney could advise.
Air ambulance transportation
In limited cases, Medicare Part B covers transportation in an air ambulance. The service must be medically necessary, meaning that you require immediate and rapid ambulance transportation that could not be provided by a ground ambulance. More specifically, the service must be needed either because:
A ground ambulance cannot get to you where you are
Or, there is a great distance to travel or another obstacle involved in getting you to the nearest appropriate facility.
So it looks as if they're not totally opposed to the principle of assisting with transportation issues - though you'd have to do some pretty fast talking. If I were you I'd ring them up and ask for help.
Maybe an idea is to offer to pay a friend to fly out to you and back with your dad.