How to find care outside the home
Monday, February 28th, 2005.
A recent Indianapolis Star article offered area residents information and advice on making the best living choice for their elderly loved ones in Indiana. Finding a nursing home, or other long term care facility, not only means becoming familiar with the types of facilities available but also licensing requirements (unlike nursing homes, ALFs are not required to be licensed), funding restrictions, facility-specific features (like allowing smoking), and a host of other issues. Resources recommended for those researching nursing homes and ALFs include The Medicare Web site, the Indiana State Department of Health, and Indiana Long Term Care Ombudsman Program. Although experts say no online research can replace visiting nursing homes and speaking with residents and staff. (For general information on selecting a nursing home, please see our Choosing a Nursing Home section.)
From the article
The Medicare Web site keeps detailed statistics on all Medicare- and Medicaid-certified nursing homes. The site provides information on staffing and quality-of-care measures such as how many residents have pressure sores, which, says Grant, “are almost 100 percent avoidable.”
The listings also tell you how that home compares with others in the state and the nation. There’s little exceptional about Indiana’s nursing homes, however, experts say.
“The problems we see here, for the most part, are problems we see in nursing homes in general,” Grant says.
Read the full text of the article >>
« Nursing Home Abuse News Main Page.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.