My sister Karen had pulled over to the side of the road to call me. She was in tears, practically inconsolable.  Karen was on a mission to inspect nursing homes for our dad and she had just visited her first one.  In between her tears she expressed her grief.  The thought of our dad living in a nursing home was devastating.  After a while she caught her breath, and we shared our painful disbelief that this was indeed our reality – this was his reality.  His health was spiraling out of control – dementia, amputated legs, mysterious infections – our eating-right regularly-exercising dad was deteriorating before our eyes, and a nursing home, sadly, was where he needed to be.  And so, after we wiped away our tears and took a deep breath, Karen pulled back into traffic and continued her search for our dad’s new home.

First, you need to figure out what level of care your parent needs.  Our dad needed the highest level of care, which meant a nursing home.  There may be a lot of different names for “senior care,” but when you get right down to it, there are three basic levels to choose from.

Not Medicare.  Medicare generally only pays for short-term care for rehabilitation purposes.

There are three basic ways to pay for long-term care:

1. your parent would use his or her own financial resources,
2. long-term insurance, if your parent has a policy, or
3. Medicaid, if your parent qualifies, and, generally, Medicaid only covers nursing homes, though some states now pay for assisted-living facilities as well.  The nursing home business office should be able to answer your eligibility questions.

Take a deep breath.  The first visit is the hardest.  Here are some of the things we considered, and some of the questions we asked, and more importantly, some of the things we wished we had asked about.

The Basics:

• Where is the nursing home located?  Is it close enough for family and friends to visit regularly?  Is it close enough to your parent’s doctors to make it easy to get to appointments?
• Make sure the home is certified by both Medicare and Medicaid.  The federal government sets more than 150 different standards of care that a nursing home must meet, and inspections are conducted annually to ensure compliance.  It will also make your parent eligible for short- and long-term payment assistance.

Our dad was in two different nursing homes.  Our first experience was not so good, and so we made a change.  Luckily, our next experience was a success.  Here are the five most valuable things we learned.

“Consider hiring a sitter if you sense the nursing home staff is overwhelmed and you yourself can’t always be there with your parent.  Ask the DON (Director of Nursing) when they might need the most help.”  Jen, Home Health Nurse, The Villages, FL