This difficult
decision is oftentimes made harder by people's uncertainty and
unfamiliarity with long term care facilities. Whether a nursing
home or an assisted living facility, unless you have
previous experience dealing with a facility you can become overwhelmed
with making this important decision.
Where to Start?
A good place to start when
you begin looking for long term care facilities is to generate a list
of the facilities that are in your area.
The search results will provide you with
a list of homes, based on your search parameters, and will include the
address and phone number for each facility. After generating a list
of the facilities that meet your requirements you will need to begin
narrowing down this list by investigating each facility and
determining whether or not the facility is right for your loved one.
Schedule a Visit.
It is always a good idea for you to visit the facility and
see first hand how the facility is run. During your visit keep a
critical eye out for potential problems. If the facility does not
seem clean and well run than this is not a good sign that you would
want to place your loved one in this facility. In addition to taking
a scheduled tour of the facility, you should drop in unannounced and
see if things appear different when they are not expecting you. You
might also want to make visits at different times of the day or
different parts of the week to see if things run differently at night
or on the weekend.
When
you visit you should have a list of questions that you wish to ask.
The facility staff should be willing to answer your questions and if
they are not, this should raise a red flag. A good starting point for
a list of questions can be found at
http://www.medicare.gov/Nursing/Checklist.asp.http://www.medicare.gov/Nursing/Checklist.asp
This list provides useful questions and tips to help you in evaluating
a nursing home. It covers such topics as general information about
the facility, the quality of life of the residents, the quality of
care provided, nutrition, and safety. It would be advisable to print
out this list to use when you visit each home. In addition to the
questions on the checklist, some other questions you might want to ask
are:
•
Does the facility accept
Medicaid? (This information can be found on the state website, but
you should confirm this).
•
Does the facility require
private pay before accepting Medicaid, and if so, how long? (This is
often referred to as Key Money. Many facilities want you to pay
privately for a period of time before they will accept Medicaid.)
•
Does the facility have a
waiting list?
In
addition to these questions, you should come up with questions of your
own. The facility should answer whatever question you might come up
with to help put your mind at ease.
By putting in some time and effort to research different
facilities, you can ensure that your loved one will receive the best
quality of care and this will help to put your mind at ease during a
very stressful situation. If you still feel that the task of finding a
place for your loved one is too overwhelming, you can seek the services
of professionals. There are professionals out there who can assist you
with the entire process of finding a facility for your loved one. |