Hi everyone. I'm sure you probably
thought I dropped off the face of the earth. Nope, just working crazy
amounts of hours out here in the middle of nowhere Kansas.
At the beginning of January our social
services director quit. Despite the fact that I made it clear I did
not want that job (way too much interaction with other people) they
dumped all the responsibilities of the job in my lap. So in addition
to medical records, central supply and doing all the scheduling for
the nursing department, I was now in charge of new admissions,
discharges and jumping through all the government hoops of insurance
companies. It's been quite the nightmare because I got very little
training and mostly had to figure things out. Which, unfortunately,
I'm actually good at. Needless to say, I'm exhausted.
I've learned some very important things
during this time. (They did hire a new girl, who seems like she will
be very good. I told her I wouldn't just dump everything on her like
they did to me, but next week will probably be the last week I'll be
involved. Thank God.)
Humana and Aetna are the absolute worst
insurance you can have if you need to do a stint in a skilled nursing
facility. They will only approve 2 to 5 days to start and you are
lucky if they will give you two weeks of Physical
Therapy/Occupational Therapy before they kick you out on the street.
Let's say you fall and break something
or you go into the hospital for general weakness and confusion. The
hospital recommends that you go into a Skilled Nursing Facility for
PT/OT for strengthening before you go home. If you have Medicare as
your primary insurance and have a secondary insurance this is the
ideal situation, even though there is no truly ideal situation.
Medicare will pay for 100 days in a rehab center. But, they only pay
100% for the first 20 days. After that, Medicare will pay 80% for the
rest of the time and the secondary insurance will pick up the 20%
that is left.
Should you need to go into long term
care – Medicare won't pay for that. That is where you need
Medicaid. But Medicaid is very difficult to get on and you can not
have more than $2000 in assets or you won't qualify. Plus, if you are
considered “Medicaid pending” meaning, you have applied to be on
Medicaid but you haven't been approved, most nursing facilities will
not accept you because should you be declined you are now responsible
for paying for the time you have been residing there and most places
just end up eating the cost because the average cost of staying at a
skilled nursing facility is around $10,000 a month.
Don't even get me started on hospice.
We have three different hospice companies that come to our facility.
I got dragged into a meeting that I didn't even want to go to by one
of the hospice representatives. It literally turned into a pseudo
flowery sales pitch, trying to see who in our facility was the most
likely next target, I mean resident, to go on hospice. Perfectly
healthy residents who walk around with their walkers but might not
remember who you are even though you meet them every day. I was
mortified. Then I find out in that meeting that the one who WAS on
hospice with that company had literally just passed away not ten
minutes before. The body wasn't even cold yet and you dragged us in
here to see who is next?!!!
I left that meeting and just cried.
Because no matter what you may think, it is only about the money. All
about the money. It is a sick, sick world we live in. I'm ready to go
home.
Other than that, things have been good.
We did have a cold snap, which I believe was completely manufactured
but who knows. We went 3 weeks without water – but that is just
normal winter for us. I'm used to that. My husband is doing well. He
shakes pretty bad these days but for the most part he is hanging in
there.
Hope you all are doing well. Take care
out there.
