Medicare, covers only so much when you are dealing with a family member in serious health status. They will pay for Home Hospice but not room and board in a Nursing home or Facilty, unless the patient is in serious trouble and in pain or angish, constant. And even then Medicare pulls the coverage and sends the patient home to their family, to die at home and the family must hire a Nurses Aid at 22 to 25 dollars or more an hour.
Medicare will provide a hospital bed and a tray to feed them from and underwear for the patient also. You can only keep the person on the first floor of your home also. sadly, Medicare fails overall to care for elderly patients racked with cancer, or other serious illnesses, based on what I am seeing now.
As to Medicaid, it is impossible to qualify for Medicaid under title 19 or any other basis if you have more assets then 1,600 dollars per month in any checking, savings or stocks or bonds either. As a couple if your spouse is in serious condition, you have to spend down all assests below $52.000, you can save for one partner in the relationship. Now I have examined all of this and talked to many qualified individuals from Hospitals, To Doctors to Nurses and Nurses Aids. and I have now delved into the Hospice Organizations also. None of these worry about the condition of the spouse of the patient, like in my case.
I am a Disabled Veteran who served my country 16 years. I have six herniated discs in my spine, PTSD, Sleep Apenea, dental troubles, and even have had minor strokes over the years. I have 5 Honorable Discharges, the last under Medical in 1989. I tried asking for help for my wife, not me, yet nothing, covered her room and board in the facility she is in now, which added up to 350.00 per day, alone.
Now the only choice I had was eithe rpay the 350.00 per day tp the facility or bring my wife home under Hospice Care and take care of her on my own and bringing in a Nurse’s Aid daily twice a day. No one knows how long a cancer patient can last or will live and there is no definitive time line, here. when I asked the Hospice Person she said no one can predict that information. So the cost to care for my wife, will be at least 22 dollars an hour twice a day, till she dies, plus my not being able to take care of my own medical or health conditions.
Now, I know I sound like I am complaining here, or crying outloud. I really don’t care anymore. When all is said and done, these facilities that call themselves Nursing Homes and Rehab facilities really dont get the job done at all. They lack professionalism, they lack personnel, they need to get the job done, correctly also.
My wife has been in and out of the same facility in Waterbury, Connecticut twice now. She is a cancer patient and each time St. Mary’s Hospital has reccommended Rehabilitation for her and kept her safe.
Then she was transferred to the current Nursing Rehab Facily for the secon time on July 5th. when she left St. Mary’s Hospital in Waterbury, she could talk, just could not walk. That was in her records when the facility she is in now accepted her.
By, six hours after her entry into the facility my wife, fell twice and was not watched in said facility, amounting to two blows to her head and accellerating her decline, due, to brain injuries. When I asked the next day to The Nursing Supervisor and another operating member of said staff how it happened, or why, I got no real answers. The Nurses aid called me twice one happened at 8;15 pm and one happened at 1;15 am, that same 24 hour period.
Since those falls my wife’s condition deteriorated at a greater rate then ever before in her 15 year battle against cancer, we have been fighting since 2006. The facility at first tried to tell me that she fell at St. Mary’s Hospital while there, well I got a Nurse at said facility to open her records on their screen and there was no fall at St. Mary’s Hospital. she fell twice in six hours because one, she thought she was home and wanted to go watch television. The second time she woke up, she needed to go to the bathroom and tried to on her own. sadly, they did not, at said facility read her records correctly or put any prevention in place to make sure she did not get out of bed on her own.
Her first time at this facility they worked her for Physical, and speech Theraphy and they did get her walking again and she came home on May 5th, 2021. she stayed with me at home until July 5th, 2021 when she listed to one side in a recliner and could not walk again. So I called 911 and we went back to St. Mary’s Emergency Room. she was admitted and stayed two days, when a Dr. Abbas said they found the lescian in her brain had grown another . 2 cms and they could not biopsy it, because a needle in her brain would harm her worse. He ordered her to Rehab again and we ended up with the Facility she was in before once more. For sixty days, I as her husband had her home with me, walked to the bathroom with her using walkers, rolators and wheel chairs to get her where she needed to go, I put in ramps and cchair lifts and mopre costing me ten thousand dollars in equiptment out of our pockets. Now all sits collecting dust, and can’t be used anymore.
Medicare, this facility and Hospice speak nice and all have qualifications to get her into full coverage for different reasons. Sadly, none make sense to me, why wouldn’t Medicare give full coverage or Hospice under her condition? Simple they said she qualifies for general coverage at home, not in a facility. Then, the facility quoted me a price of $350.00 dollars per day to room and board her. We don’t have that kind of money, so a cheaper alternative was to bring her home to die here and hire a Nurses Aid to come in and clean her daily once or twice as needed, as I feed her, the best I can.
I believe this facility she is in now and will shortly leave in a few days to come home is guilty of malpractice and lack of professionalism, and much more. There are directly responible for herrapid deteriotation from the two falls on their premises, within the first six hours of her stay there. There is a direct correlation between her rapid decline and the falls and hitting of her head twice. I call it Negligence Malpractice. The facility failed to read her records, and take careful steps to insure she never left her bed for any reason and had records stating she could not walk from St. Mary’s Hospital.
So shortly I shall be seking legal advice on the above matter from a Malpractice Attorney, I am going to find a good one in my area. I will not, allow a facility that cares for elderly patients such as my wife and others to get awAY with this. I think I have a good case here. I can’t start any action, until such time as my wife is out of said facility and safe.
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