my dad is 76 years old he suffered from a stroke years back, he is no longer able to walk nor stand because of his bad knee so he needs lots of my help 24/7. He is been living with me for the past 2 months, when he first arrived here he had a fall while I was at work, 911 took him to the hospital and he was placed in a rehab center, but then the staff told me that he could only stay there for 21 days because thats how long medicare could cover, he doesnt have medicaid but I did submitted an application for long term care so he could get admitted in a nursing home, but that takes about 30 to 45 days to get approved, yesterday he had another fall while I was trying to placed him in his wheelchair, nothing major happened thankfully but I did take them to the ER, he waited for a couple hours there but he was discharged from the hospital, he insisted of wanting to talk to a social worker but the nurse told him that there was no social worker available at the time, it was late at night so it makes sense, besides all this I dont get along very well with my dad he is very stubborn and has a bad temper at times, yesterday morning he noticed that his phone no longer was working so I told him that he had to wait until his next SS paycheck so he could buy a new phone, this didnt go well, he started nagging and bothering me every 10-15 mins to let him borrow the phone so he could call someone to let him borrow money lol, this is putting a huge toll on my mental health and I dont know how much longer I can keep up with it.
them that you work and he is an “ unsafe discharge “ because he’s home alone during the day , there is no one to take care of him. The social worker at the hospital will have to find a nursing home for him .
They will try to tell you that they will send help to go to the home . It will be minimal , not enough . Do not pick up Dad from the hospital , maintain your position that he is an “ unsafe discharge “ …use those magic words . Then they can’t send him home with you since he needs help 24/7 .
The social worker will have to find him a Medicaid bed in a nursing home. He can go in as Medicaid pending .
I'm asking this because if he doesn't want to go into a facility, you won't be able to force him. And, your home is his legal residence, and if he doesn't want to move out then you'd need to actually go through an eviction process. This alone takes 30 days.
The best strategy would be to convince him to assign you as his PoA for medical and financial affairs through an elder law attorney. Or, a less expensive route is downloading PoA docs for your state through a site like Legalzoom.com or Rocketlawyer.com (and there are others as well). Then you must finalize it by doing what your state requires: usually having it signed by a notary in front of 2 non-family witnesses (your bank or his can do this for free by appointment). Make sure to create 2 original versions of this document: one for him and one for you/his PoA.
Once this is done you will need to take him to his doctor to have a physical and get him assessed for LTC, and also have a cognitive/memory test (he sounds like he may have the beginnings based on your information).
Since you already applied for him for Medicaid, is he already assessed as needing LTC? There is no real way to expedite his approval but if he falls again, call 911 and get him to the ER. Once there then you can talk to the discharge people or social worker about transitioning him directly into a facility. Make sure they know he is an "unsafe discharge" and that you are not able to caregive for him at home any more due to what the stress is doing to your mental health.
Hospitals are going to keep giving you the run around, because you haven't been through this before and don't know the key words to say.
Next time your dad falls, goes to ER, say, " Unsafe Discharge" and when they try to manipulate you just keep saying it. Tell them it's unsafe for your dad to be home, and you can't care for him safely.