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.
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