Estate Planning

Medicaid Patients May be Vulnerable to Eviction by Facilities

By Gregory Herman-Giddens

Nursing homes are being accused by some patient advocates and state long-term care ombudsmen of increasingly evicting patients who are too inconvenient or too costly to care for. And the most vulnerable appear to be those patients with dementia or highly vocal families who are on Medicaid, according to a recent Wall Street Journal report.

The federal government permits nursing homes to evict patients for specific reasons, such as endangering the health or safety of others and needing care only available elsewhere.

The facilities claim they play by the rules and follow federal guidelines, but an increasing numbers of formal complaints about nursing home discharge practices suggest otherwise.

The U.S. Administration on Aging has seen complaints double from 1996 to 2006. And this doesn’t take into account informal complaints or unreported incidents.

The reason for the increase in nursing home evictions – also referred to as involuntary discharges – appears to be financial. Evicted Medicaid patients are replaced by patients coming out of the hospital who pay a higher daily rate for short-term care and rely on Medicare or private insurance to pick up the tab.

This new focus on short-term recovery and rehabilitation makes good financial sense for facilities. One nursing home chain claims it averages $411 a day from Medicare patients but just $166 from those on Medicaid. As an industry, nursing homes report Medicaid reimbursements are $4.4 billion short of the actual cost of care.

Of course it’s the patients who suffer the most. Elderly and frail, they are transferred to other nursing home facilities, hospitals or psychiatric facilities, where they find it difficult to thrive in a totally new environment. The “transfer trauma” they experience results in mental health problems, weight loss, and frequent falls that can lead to death within months of a change in venue.

In comparison with nursing home patients, assisted living residents have even less protection. Management in assisted living centers can evict residents without reason or appeal process just by giving them one or two month’s notice. Here, too, the U.S. Administration on Aging has seen discharge practice complaints soar over the last decade. Accusations are growing that Medicaid patients are being targeted for eviction and two states are pursuing assisted-living companies on these charges.

Source: To be Old, Frail and Evicted: Patients at Risk. Wall Street Journal, 7 August.

Full post as published by North Carolina Estate Planning Blog on September 12, 2008 (boomark / email).