My grandmother is a 87 year old woman who was previously in a memory care facility, assisted living. She has dementia and had a stroke and became immobile and incontinent, and also now needed assistance to help feed herself. She eventually developed a pressure sore that has progressed to stage 3-4. The doctor says there is little hope that it will heal. Before it progressed we moved her to another care facility where she was better treated but the wound progressed. We were then informed that she had to leave the memory care facility due to the wound and go to skilled nursing. She was admitted to the hospital and has been there for a week now. They will not let her back in the original nursing home. The hospital case manager says that she is not able to be rehabed so no skilled nursing will take her. It seems ridiculous that the nursing home was permitted to kick her out because she needs skilled nursing, but now skilled nursing won't take her. The hospital wants to discharge her, but she doesn't have anywhere to go. She doesn't qualify for medicaid as she makes over the monthly income limit in pension and social security, but not enough to privately pay for skilled nursing. We thought of Miller's trust but are informed that it will take 45-90 days to be processed if not more and she is currently in the hospital now. She only has medicare. We can't take her as our work schedule isn't from home and my mother is disabled. It seems like there is no recourse and all anyone can do is give apologies.
Hospital may have a difficult time finding a place for her, sadly, especially info shared about this sore. Even if they can find one, it will probably be less than ideal, again, sadly.
Try to apply for LTC (Long Term Care) Medicaid anyway, she may actually get approved.
Good luck to you all!!
I think you need to learn more about qualfying for Medicaid long term care. Hire an eldercare lawyer to assist your grandmother with spend down plan to allow her to qualify. She can qualify by allowable expenses to spend down to her states threshold. Her social security amd other income will go to longterm care facility and Medicaid will cover the difference. Depending on State she is allowed to keep a monthly stipend for her personal expenses.
What happened to the money from selling her house 4 years ago ?
That can be used to pay for her care .
i guess she didn’t use up the money from the house to pay assisted living , if they are saying it would have to be paid back .
Who received that money ? Do they still have it available to pay it back to grandma for her care? Otherwise she will be denied .
This may cause quite the pickle for you all , because of the 5 year look back .
I don’t know that another memory care facility would accept grandma due to the wound care needed etc , but you could ask around I guess . I’ve seen some where some residents were really at skilled level of care . But usually it was a resident that had been there a really long time so the facility was willing to keep them .
She was paying $3500 in memory care ? , that’s cheap .
Would the memory care facility she was at , take her back if she was on hospice ? Sometimes they will .
Talk to the Discharge Planner at the hospital about that and tell them in NO uncertain terms that they will not be allowed to discharge her to any place other than a nursing facility.
Tell them it would be an “ unsafe discharge “ for Grandma to be home alone with a disabled person . Use those words .
The case manager will have to assist to find a bed in SNF somewhere for her to live permanently , not in rehab . Her money will be used up until there is no more , then Medicaid will kick in and make up the difference each month .
These case managers assume someone will go back to where they came from or to rehab . Their goal is to discharge from the hospital . They do try to stick the family with the problem where an elderly goes if they can’t pay private pay because it’s harder to find a bed.
SNF often want someone who can pay private pay in full each month for at least a year or more. Case manager will have to find a facility willing to take grandma as Medicaid pending . This is work they are trying to have the family take care of . You could certainly call around and try to get grandma a bed . But the fact that the caseworkers job is to discharge grandma, have them help . They probably know which ones to ask first .
Be firm with the caseworker that grandma can not go home . They may try to tell you that they can set up some homecare , but it would not be enough based on grands memory care needs and wound care needs .
Good Luck .