Evaluating Nursing Home Costs and Quality Ratings

Nursing home care is not a subject anyone usually wants to discuss or research until the need arises.  Then, in an emergency situation, accurate information must be obtained quickly.  Many times seniors are discharged from a hospital to a nursing home because they have been approved for a Medicare paid stay in the nursing home to recover.  Medicare will pay for a nursing home for up to 100 days, with medical doctor approval.

As the owner of a senior home care agency which served hundreds of clients, I know that adult children want quality care for their parents and am familiar with all the questions that are asked when senior care needs suddenly arise, such as:

• What does Medicare cover?  (Up to 100 days in a nursing home per stay, with doctor preapproval)
• What does Medicaid cover?  (Medicaid, for extremely low income seniors, will pay ongoing for a nursing home, until the senior passes away or no longer needs the care)
• What are the financial qualifications for Medicaid?  (Check out the requirements in your state, usually less than $2,000 in assets and you can no longer gift all your assets to qualify nor should you really want this)
• Which nursing home is best in my area?
• Will the nursing home provide a caregiver for my parent?
• How much does the nursing home cost once Medicare does not pay?
• How much does senior home care cost?

You may review the health inspection reports for a nursing home to find out about their level of quality, but these should only be a starting point.  The nursing home inspections are only conducted once every year and a half.  Just as you probably make sure your own home is in top shape before company comes, the nursing homes do the same when the inspector is there.  In addition, I can share many stories about how the inspections will vary based on the inspector.  A table may have been at a certain place in a laundry room for years and been acceptable and a new inspector arrives and says the table is dangerous.

What can be used from the inspection reports is information which has the most chance to be accurate.  Caregiverlist's nursing home star ratings use the Medicare star-ratings from the health inspection reports but showcase just the top level information which has the most potential to be accurate, such as staff-to-patient-ratio.  It is pretty easy to look at the payroll records and record this information, making it likely to be accurate.  You can also walk into a nursing home and ask this question.

Caregiverlist also provides the actual daily cost of each nursing home for a private and shared room.  Learn about the costs of nursing home care and understand a patient will have one Certified Nursing Aide that they are sharing with up to as many as 10 to 15 other residents.  This is where the challenges with quality nursing home care arise, as one Certified Nursing Aide simply may not be able to make the rounds to all of their residents each morning if one resident has had a bathroom accident in the night or is over-weight and requires extra assistance with transfering in and out of bed.  Many Certified Nursing Aides change jobs and work for senior home care agencies where they can deliver one-on-one care, simply because they are burned out from the inability to adequately care for such a large number of residents assigned to them in a nursing home.

Senior Home Care Agencies provide one-on-one care in the home and also often provide caregivers for residents in nursing homes and assisted living communities.

Find the costs of nursing homes in your area and submit a request for rates and services from senior home care agencies to understand your care options before the need arises.

For example, the Abington of Glenview, a nursing home in Glenview, Illinois, costs $210 for a single room and $290 for a double room.  The average nursing home cost in Illinois is $196.