My 90 year old grandmother was just placed into a nursing home. Looking through the reviews on the Medicare website and others from people's whose loved one has been in there were not good. What do you do? My mother is her Durable POA and didn't know where to place her when her memory has gone downhill so fast. I do not want to step on my mother's toes, however I know that she would rather my grandmother be in a nice place where she is treated nicely. My grandmother is on Medicare and Medicaid, the place we would like to place her says that they have no beds available for Medicaid patients. Very upsetting. I did find one in a town near by that has a lot better reviews then the one that she is currently in. Any help would be great as my grandmother has dementia and is really scared and combative at times. Please help me make the last little bit of my grandmother's life is well taken care of.
I'd suggest placing her on a list at your top choices. Hopefully when they have an opening, she will be cleared through Medicaid and able to move within short order. For my mom, NH # 2 sent out a 2 person assessment team to visit mom to make sure they could provide the level of care she needed. I had already been to NH#2 and done an application for mom and provided a copy of all the paperwork needed along with her Medicaid approval letter. They had a bed available the day I did the application, so the assessment team went out a couple of days later. You will, as her DPOA, MPOA, need to authorize the assessment teams visit as sometimes the old NH will be hostile to this happening. They called me from the visit and said mom was OK for them. Faxed a letter to old NH that afternoon telling them she was moving EOM. Now Medicaid pays the facilities on a day rate so you only have to co-pay for the days she is still at NH #1 and you do not have to do a 30 day notice if they are on Medicaid either. I had paid for the month so that is why I set the move for end of month. Understand? From what I gather, if you move them mid month, it can take forever to get the co-pay back from the old NH to pay to the new NH. So you want the move to be set for the end of the month or beginning of the month so you just pay old NH for a few first days and then the new NH the rest. So no $ issues.
When you move her, you HAVE TO make sure that you take all her medications. They seem to be done in a 30 day blister packs and are issued monthly. Usually they are hanging in a bag in the nurses station drug area. Even if you have to wait 45 minutes tapping your foot, do NOT leave without her meds. Medicaid & Medicare won't duplicate payment and you will have to private pay for the meds and it could be expensive. Good luck.