Fort Smith Nursing Homes

Fort Smith nursing homes offer temporary to extended-term residency to patients in need of intermittent to around-the-clock health management, rehabilitation, evaluation and observation. Residents are admitted for a wide range of medical conditions. Acute, chronic, permanent, temporary and serious health concerns are treated by an interdisciplinary team of caregivers, which includes physicians, nurses, nursing aids, non-medical personnel, social workers, specialists and therapists. They collaborate to deliver the most advanced form of medical care one can obtain outside a hospital.

Nursing care is broken down into two general forms, long-term and short-term care. Certain nursing homes, or skilled nursing facilities, specialize in the treatment of particular health problems, such as spinal injuries or osteoarthritis.

Short-term care patients have recently had a heart attack, fall, stroke, aneurism or other acute medical event that put them under hospital care. With short-term care, these patients pursue rehabilitation through therapy and other personalized forms of recovery. Nursing homes provide patients with all the proper equipment and services, including occupational, physical, respiratory, auditory and speech therapy, to help them regain lost strength and functions. Short-term care often acts as an intermediary stage of recuperation for patients. They do not usually seek full recovery under such care. Discharged patients with the need for further medical treatment typically move to in home residential care or an assisted living facility.

Hospital care is the initial point of medical care for nearly 75 percent of short-term nursing patients. It is important for those patients to receive the best possible hospital care in order to quickly and properly jumpstart their recovery. Based on patients’ hospital experiences, high quality health care services in Fort Smith can be found at St. Edward Mercy Medical Center.

Long-term care focuses on helping patients restore or maintain their current level of health. Many patients seek long-term care because their existing condition, like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancer, hypothyroidism, kidney disease, hypertension and multiple sclerosis, is in a deteriorating state. Long-term patients’ symptoms require complicated and elaborate medical practices. All members of a nursing home’s team of caregivers collaborate to fulfill the needs of each patient. Nurses and physicians prescribed certain courses of action and perform medical procedures like injections, medication adjustments, colostomies, tracheostomies and intravenous therapy. Non-medical personnel help patients by assisting them with activities of daily living and everyday hygiene. Social workers give patients reassurance through companionship and other forms of social care.

Fort Smith skilled nursing facility costs fall far below the national average and around $400 per month below the Arkansas state median. Semi-private and private nursing home rooms cost $4,068 and $4,547 per month.

A recent trend in the elderly care industry has seen patients flocking to assisted living facilities instead of nursing homes. Assisted living facilities are seen as more popular options for seniors since they afford patients more social independence. They are also attractive because they are not SNFs. The current problem is that even when a diagnosis often demands skilled care, seniors and their families choose assisted living care because of the negative connotations associated with nursing care. Assisted living patients most frequently end up in nursing care because their condition is not suitable for a lower level of care. It is important for seniors and their loved ones to choose the right option when trying to treat serious medical conditions. Although assisted living may seem to be a better choice, nursing care offers more personnel and a much wider array of services.

Our site wants to give seniors and their families information about all the nuances and general facts associated with nursing care. We want to help them find a SNF with quality caregivers and at the right cost and location.