by NotSoTweetOne

Created on: January 22, 2007   Last Updated: November 17, 2010

I have recently been faced with caring for my husband's grandmother who fell and broke her hip, and the doctors said that after surgery she would need a nursing home for physical therapy before she could come home to live with us. I have worked in nursing homes in the past so I had a few in mind when they said this, but I only had a couple of days to make a decision and not enough time to check out all of them in person. I also had to check and see which ones her insurance would pay for because she had an insurance that was used before medicare so we had to go with one of their contracted nursing homes in order to avoid high medical bills.

The first thing I did was sit at the computer and do a search for information on nursing homes, and I was led to the main site for the federal medicare program (www.medicare.gov) and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that you can check out any medicare authorized nursing home by looking at information on the staff, what type of services they offer and even look at their state inspection reports that lists any health deficits they were cited for and the date those were corrected (if they were corrected). In addition to this they also had information on what medicare will pay, a checklist for finding a nursing home, and much more important information that someone might need when looking for a nursing home.

One of the nursing homes I was interested in was right down the street from my house and this web site allowed me to see just how they fared on their inspections (which was very good) and cut the time I would have had to go to each nursing home to inspect them because it showed me the ones I didn't want her in and allowed me to only visit the ones that scored high on their inspection. Out of the 3 I visited the one down the street fit our needs better, and I was happy to find out that they were contracted with grandma's insurance. This is the one we chose and grandma's doctor thinks this will help with her recovery because we can be very involved with her care and rehabilitation which will help keep her motivated so that she can come home sooner.

No one wants to put their loved one in a nursing home but if you do check them out carefully, and go to this web site and print up all the information you need. The social service staff at all the nursing homes I checked out were happy to see that I was armed with information when I walked in the door, and they were happy to see I was taking an active role in gathering information. If you take the initiative to gather information it will make your decision easier in the long run, and it will prevent you from being misled by some nursing homes from getting into a situation that isn't right for you and your loved one.

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