Reducing Your Need for Nursing Home Care

Medicaid planning is aimed at making sure you get the quality of care you need as you get older, without having to completely deplete the assets you have worked hard over the course of your life to earn. In addition to using estate planning and asset protection tools, such as a trust, you can reduce your potential future costs by reducing the likelihood that you will eventually require nursing home care.

When Older Adults Need Nursing Home Care

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there are currently as many as 14 million Americans residing in nursing homes throughout the country. For the majority of us, our preference would be to remain independent and in our own homes for as long as possible, but situations often arise which make that impossible.

Accidental injuries, serious illnesses, and chronic conditions, such as dementia, often require more in terms of medical care and personal support than our family or friends can provide. Once an injury or illness becomes severe enough as to require a hospital stay, your chances of eventually ending up in a nursing home increase dramatically.

The RAND Corporation announced in August 2017 that studies indicated as many half of all those over the age of 60 will eventually need to stay in a nursing home for a period of time over the course of their lives. This is largely in part to hospital discharge policies, which often prefer to place patients in nursing homes, rather than keeping them in the hospital. Nursing home costs are expensive, but not when compared to the charges associated with spending even two or three night in a hospital bed. For some people, their stay in a nursing home after discharge amounts to only a few days or weeks. For others, it becomes a permanent solution to providing for their long term medical and personal care needs.

Avoiding the Need for Nursing Home Care

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) states that as the population continues to grow older, the push is on to provide more home health and community services. Many of these can be provided through Medicaid, and are significantly less expensive than receiving nursing home care. Meal delivery services, transportation providers, home healthcare aides, and social support groups all are available locally to residents.

Taking advantage of home health care options in our community requires you to be proactive in terms of your health. This includes:

• Visiting your doctor regularly and following instructions for maintaining your health and managing existing health conditions;
• Reducing the potential for accidental injuries as the result of slips, trips, and falls or car accidents;
• Talking with friends and family members about ways in which they would be willing to help.

To discuss the options available to help you pay for home health or nursing home care without depleting your assets, contact Cavallo & Cavallo in New York and request a consultation today. We are your neighborhood law firm, and can guide you to the services you need to protect and provide for yourself.

Resources:

cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/nursing-home-care.htm

rand.org/news/press/2017/08/28/index1.html