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This web page is about California Medicare skilled care advice. Skilled nursing care is health care provided under a doctor's orders. This type of care can only be administered by or under the supervision of skilled medical care professionals. Care that can be provided by non-professionals is not skilled nursing care. Rehabilitative care that requires skilled professional staff is also a form of skilled care. Medicare helps to pay for skilled nursing care. An individual receives skilled nursing care to help improve their medical condition or to attempt to keep their medical condition from deteriorating. In California Medicare and Medicare supplements only cover skilled nursing care under certain conditions. An gingival must not have used all the days in the current benefit period. That individual must also have had a hospital stay that qualified. To qualify the stay had to have been for a minimum of 3 consecutive days from the time they were admitted and this does not include the day they were discharged. An individual must also enter the skilled nursing facility within 30 days of when they were discharged from the hospital. If you leave the skilled nursing facility and then have to reenter it with thirty days you don't have to have another three day hospital stay in order to qualify. Medicare must have approved the skilled nursing facility. The condition for which a person requires skilled care must have been the same one that had been during the qualifying three day hospital stay. A physician must have ordered the skilled care. Medicare breaks down time periods that it will cover skilled nursing care costs into what are referred to as benefit periods. The benefit period begins on the first day an individual starts Medicare Part A hospital or skilled nursing facility benefits. There are one hundred covered days in a benefit period. When these days are used up there are no more benefits available for the current benefit period. The benefit period ends when a person has not been in a skilled nursing facility or hospital for at least 60 consecutive days or if a person has been in a skilled nursing facility for at least 60 consecutive days without actually having received skilled care there. There are no limits as to the number of benefit periods a person can have over their lifetime. Some of the costs associated with skilled nursing facilities are speech therapy, dietary counseling, medicine, medical supplies, semi-private room, ambulance transportation, meals, occupational therapy, medical social services, physical therapy and skilled nursing care. These services have to be necessary in order for Medicare to cover them. Medicare will pay for the full cost of the first 20 days of skilled nursing care. The next 80 days require an individual to pay a daily co-payment with Medicare paying the balance. Medicare pays nothing for skilled nursing care care costs after the first one hundred days. Some Medicare Supplements help cover the daily co-payment. With over twenty years experience helping Californians with their Medicare Supplement needs we will assist you too. Let us analyze your needs, and assist you with getting coverage. Are you confused by the complexity of Medicare? With the large amount of information it is easy to have difficulty finding the answers you require. Don't waste your time trying to find which plan is right for you. We have the answers. |