Nursing Homes
A nursing home (also known as a skilled nursing facility, skilled nursing unit or rest home) provides care for residents who require constant nursing care or have significant deficiencies with activities of daily living. Nursing home require that a licensed nurse be on duty 24 hours a day and at least one shift per day (one of those nurses has to be a registered nurse) and are managed by a Licensed Nursing Home Administrator.
Services provided by nursing homes usually include services of nurses, nursing aides and assistants; physical, occupational and speech therapists; social workers; recreational assistants; and room/board.
Medicare covers nursing home services for 20 – 100 days for those who need skilled nursing or rehabilitation services following hospitalization of at least 3 consecutive days. To be eligible for a nursing home through medicare a physician must certify that the beneficiary needs skilled nursing care or skilled rehabilitation services.
Medicaid also covers nursing home care if the prospective resident needs custodial care, meet the state’s means-tested income and assets test and require a level of care offered in a nursing home.
The cost of staying in a nursing home can be very high. Most people deplete their resources to cover the cost. Medicaid will cover continued stays in a nursing home for life based on eligibility.
Nursing homes have become more home like and less hospital like. They rooms are arranged in units surrounding a common kitchen and living room. Many residents also can bring their pets along during their stay. There are 2 kinds of care in nursing homes; resident oriented care and task oriented care. Resident oriented care is when a nurse is assigned to a particular patient in order to develop a relationship with them. They are treated more like family and residents who receive this kind of care have a higher quality of life. The other type of care is called task oriented care. Task oriented care is where specific nurses are assigned to do certain tasks on numerous residents in a specific ward. Residents usually do not develop a close relationship with a given nurse.
(Source: Wikipedia.org)
Category : Long Term care