Health and mobility as one gets older

cag60093
Tue, 19 Mar 2024 14:27:44 +0000

I am sorry about your family member’s fall. I am not aware of any gap insurance to help cover temporary aid. When Dad went to the hospital after his fall, he was eventually admitted for 5 days and was approved for rehab facility for a short stay. For this particular fall, we decided to bring him home instead and hire private care even though it was expensive bc of his dementia. Previous hospitalization and rehab stay was very stressful on him and family because he didn’t want to stay and wandered too much for the staff.

The lessons I learned from his experience and my FIL’s:

1. patients have to be admitted for a minimum of 3 days in order to qualify for rehab assistance;

2. hospitals generally don’t like to keep patients long to qualify for rehab stay esp if they have dementia or Alzhemizer’s. Every doctor always stressed dementia patients do better at home;

3. better rehab facilities don’t always have space for dementia or Alzheimer’s patients;

4. rehab facilities strongly prefer patients with traditional Medicare, not Medicare advantage at least in my area or pay premium out of pocket;

5. having financial resources is key;

6. having a spouse and adult children nearby to help (daily esp the first few weeks) is very helpful.

Dad died in his home, which was his wish as well as mom’s. He had 24 hour care the last 2 months of his life which was $10k per month. FIL (91) started at an assistance living facility after a fall ($4k per month) and now is at the highest care level at the same facility ($14k per month). It has been about 2 years since his fall. Dad had and FIL has financial resources to make these tragic transitions possible.