Long Island Nursing Homes

Long Island nursing homes provide quality care for seniors that need assistance with daily living activities and rehabilitative therapy. Skilled nursing facility medical personnel are trained to help seniors with continuous care needs. A Long Island skilled nursing facility can provide short-term care, long-term care or both. Short-term care provides medical treatment for patients recovering from health crises like hip replacements, heart attacks, strokes and aneurisms. Patients that properly rehabilitate typically resume their normal lives or move to an assisted living facility. Long-term care is necessary for seniors that have severe mental or physical disabilities that require round-the-clock nursing or for medical conditions that regular testing. Caregivers assist long-term patients with meals, personal hygiene and medication.

Long Island nursing care costs are much more expensive than the New York State median. The monthly cost of a semi-private nursing home room is $12,471. For a private room the cost runs up to $13,383. For post short-term nursing care stays, assisted living facility bedrooms cost $5,565 per month. Homemaker services, home health aide and adult day health care bear a monthly cost of $4,195, $4,290 and $867, respectively.

Balancing both the quality of care and the cost of care can be difficult. One important consideration for seniors on Medicare is that skilled nursing facility coverage only pays for 100 days of care during one benefit period. After those 100 days are used, Medicare will cover none of the cost of care.

Seniors that end up in the hospital and need a further period for recovery are often pushed to SNFs. It is up to a doctor’s prerogative to require a nursing home stay. Doctor preapproval for a nursing home stay is a prerequisite to qualify for Medicare skilled nursing facility coverage. Some of the best Long Island area hospitals based on patients’ hospital experiences ratings, like Long Island Jewish Medical Center and Long Island College Hospital, will feed seniors into nursing homes. Doctors can help recommend certain homes with better reputations in the area. These preapprovals are also required by Medicare after hospital visits of three days or more if they are to cover the first 20 days of an SNF stay.

It is essential to learn as much as you can about the facilities you are looking in to. One critical aspect of any nursing home is its staff. Since bedridden patients will be at the mercy of the facility’s personnel, it is important to find homes with staff that have been there for a long period and that seem happy. This will usually translate to care that is genuinely compassionate and respectful towards the seniors.

Often times the need for skilled nursing care creeps up on seniors and their families. They may find themselves scrambling to understand costs, what type of care is needed, and a multitude of other considerations. Our site wants to help seniors and their loved ones better understand the confusing situation and find the best skilled nursing home facilities for their needs.