Assisted Care, Hospice, and the financial soaking of the elderly

[pnwmom]

5. If finances are a concern, consider moving her to a good nursing home

while she still has enough money to enter as a private- pay patient -- about 6 months worth of assets.

My mother was on the borderline between needing the highest level of assisted living care, or a nursing home. Fortunately, we decided to go with the nursing home. All the rooms are private and there's an excellent staffing ratio. And if she outlives her resources, the facility is Medicaid-eligible and nothing in her situation will change.

If we had waited till she ran out of money to apply for Medicaid, we would have been facing a time crunch and wouldn't have been able to wait for a spot in a good place to open up.

P.S. She's so much happier than she was in a couple other rehab centers she'd been to in recent years for brief periods. There really is such a thing as an excellent nursing home, and we were lucky to find one.