When you’re looking for a way to get your elderly parents or loved ones cared for in the long-term, it may be that Medicaid is the right choice for you. Of course, there are issues of patient pay to contend with, in which forms of “income” your loved one has (if any, and with certain exceptions) must be used to help pay for their care until they are exhausted. And before your loved ones can be admitted for long-term care under Medicaid, they (or you, on their behalf) must first perform some preliminary tasks. This can include submitting a pre-admission screening request, and, naturally, applying for Medicaid at their local department of social services. (By the way, really smart people can unintentionally hurt themselves or loved ones in the process and fail to preserve assets or even successfully obtain the benefit.) Nonetheless, it’s important to know which long-term care services are available in Virginia in order to be sure this would be the right choice for them.
· Nursing Facility Care – In this scenario, a nursing facility would take on the task of caring for your loved one for an indefinite amount of time, possibly for the remainder of their life. Generally before your loved one can be taken in, the local health department sends a nurse and a social worker to make a determination of whether your loved one truly is in need of long-term nursing care (known as the pre-admission screening).
· Medicaid Covered Community-Based Care—Rather than having an institution take your elderly loved one in, you may opt to submit Virginia’s Commonwealth Coordinated Care (CCC) Plus Waiver, which aids elders in receiving long-term care services while still living at home. In order to meet the criteria for this waiver they must still qualify for a nursing-home level of care, and meet the regular Medicaid requirements for income.The personal care attendants for your loved one may either be hired and supervised by your loved one or you, or you can choose to have an agency do the hiring and supervising for you. The sorts of services offered by this Waiver program include:
o Emergency response systems
o Medication monitoring
o Environmental modification
o Personal care
o Respite care
o Adult day health care
– This is a daytime group-setting program providing medical and rehabilitative services.
We Answer Your Long-Term Care Questions
If you or your elderly loved one is considering possible long-term care, and believe Medicaid may be an option, attend one of Promise Law’s free Medicaid workshops. These workshops provide a great foundation of information that everyone needs to be able to make good planning decisions. Moreover, if you attend a workshop you also get a complimentary one-on-one consultation with one of our attorneys.
