A couple of years ago, I found myself suddenly having to help my mother who had been admitted to a hospital after a bad fall. I was scared for her, but also scared for me. I knew nothing about what she had arranged for health insurance. We were both very lucky because she had made… Continue reading Re-Enrollment Time for Medicare: Don’t Be Lazy, Review Your Options
How to Use the SeniorCareData.com Database to Help Choose a Home Health Care Provider
When you or a loved one needs home health care, it can be difficult to determine which provider is the best fit. There are many options available, and each one has its own unique set of services and benefits. How do you know which provider is right for you? The SeniorCareData.com database can help. We… Continue reading How to Use the SeniorCareData.com Database to Help Choose a Home Health Care Provider
Guide to Choosing the Right Type of Senior Living Facility
Guide to Choosing the Right Type of Senior Living Facility When deciding to move or admit an older person to a senior living facility, you need to properly plan how you should do it and where and what facility is ideal for the senior’s needs. It is tough to decide when making a transition, but… Continue reading Guide to Choosing the Right Type of Senior Living Facility
What are the Types of Senior Living Facilities?
As you get older or when you have a older family member or friend, there may come a time when you or they need additional assistance. At this point, you can either consider contracting with a home healthcare provider or move to one of the many forms of senior housing. This article outlines the different… Continue reading What are the Types of Senior Living Facilities?
Medicare or Medicaid, What’s the Difference?
I recently had to help a elderly relative who was taken to the hospital after falling down and not being able to get up. Luckily she did not break anything, and this experience was before Covid hit. Also very luckily she already had signed up properly for Medicare and Medicare Advantage. For me this was… Continue reading Medicare or Medicaid, What’s the Difference?
Inspection Risk Continues for Nursing Homes
CMS just updated their data for nursing homes today and unfortunately the average lag time between nursing home inspections continues to rise. As I noted last month, the average time between inspections has risen significantly during the Covid pandemic. For several months, CMS did not report an inspections. For the month of April, CMS shows… Continue reading Inspection Risk Continues for Nursing Homes
Covid-19 Not the Only Risk for Nursing Home Residents
I held off on publishing this article because I do not want to say something that is inappropriate in the middle of the Covid pandemic. But it seems like a significant concern. Specifically I am writing about the fact that average time since being inspected by CMS continues to grow. As you can see from… Continue reading Covid-19 Not the Only Risk for Nursing Home Residents
Monitor Your Nursing Home
Last month we quietly launched a new feature allowing people to “monitor” a specific senior care facilities. We did this by adding a button below the page heading entitled “Subscribe to Updates to the Facility”. Now we’ve sent out the first emails to our “subscribers”. I thought I should say something about what we mean… Continue reading Monitor Your Nursing Home
The Fault in CMS’ Stars
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (“CMS”) spends considerable time and effort promoting their Five Star Quality Rating System for Nursing Homes (see here). They even provide an extensive analysis of how they arrive at their ratings (see here). The ratings are based on a complicated scoring system that involves multiple factors including: both… Continue reading The Fault in CMS’ Stars
Covid Cases in Nursing Homes
Yesterday we stumbled on a new CMS dataset which provides a weekly accounting for Covid-19 infections and deaths in nursing homes. Strangely this report is not part of the more general set of nursing home reports that we currently retrieve. The data is supposedly reported weekly though it is not clear when it is published. … Continue reading Covid Cases in Nursing Homes