A few weeks ago, a senior care facility based out of Colorado was informed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that they will no longer be receiving funds from CMS for new people to receive services from them. The reasoning? There have been repeated reports of staffing violations at this particular facility.
Unfortunately, this has become more and more of an issue throughout the United States over the last couple years. As the pandemic has led to people losing jobs and the “Great Resignation” has seen unprecedented numbers of people losing their jobs. And the senior care industry is no exception to this. Whether we like it or not, this means that care services, both residential and otherwise, have lost employees. The quality of care that these services have been able to provide has deteriorated as a result, seniors have been negatively impacted, and rules and regulations have been violated as a result. From a CMS perspective, some sort of action needs to be taken as a result. For some services, such as what happened in Colorado, that means a loss of federal and state dollars. It’s unfortunate, but this kind of action needs to occur if services are going to be persuaded to stay in compliance. It’s one of the most effective ways to keep services working for the people that you love, and not themselves.
This is an incentive for senior care companies to stay in compliance with the regulations. However, the human cost here is very real. No one wants to be one of the people residing in a care facility that suddenly finds themselves in financial turmoil because Medicaid or Medicare will not pay the money that was expected because of violations to care protocol. No one wants to be one of the family members of a resident of one of these care homes. This can be a traumatic event. Not only could the cost of care suddenly go up dramatically, the need to relocate quickly could become a reality. Overall, it is a very stressful situation. Even an otherwise great situation could become a dire one over the course of a few hours.
How can this be avoided?
First, find the best care possible for a loved one. This doesn’t need to be a nursing home or an assisted living facility, but it might be. If you do decide to go this route, that’s perfectly acceptable. Doing some investigating prior to choosing your service–and then reevaluate things from time to time.
If you have questions about what we do to help protect both our employees and the seniors that we work with, please let us know. We do outline a lot of these measures on our site, but it is impossible to cover all of this in detail in a setting like this. We try to be as transparent as possible for the safety and security of those we serve. Feel free to give us a call to learn more about who we are and what we do.
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