Senior Care Organizations

Consumer Reports Complete Guide to Health Services for Seniors : What Your Family Needs to Know About Finding and Financing, Medicare, Assisted Living, Nursing Homes, Home Care, Adult Day Care

Description

Whether you're exploring options for yourself or for your aging parents, you know that navigating the world of health care services and long-term-care facilities can be a daunting task. Consumer Reports, unrivaled in its unbiased expertise, provides the essential guide to getting the best care.

Filled with hands-on practical advice in a user-friendly tone and format, this invaluable handbook will help you find the right services and secure them at the lowest cost. How can you take advantage of pharmaceutical company drug-assistance programs? What essential services should a home health aide provide? How can you calculate annual health care expenses? How do you decipher a state survey report for a nursing home? Where can you find adult day care? What should you look for in an assisted-living contract? You'll find the answers to these and hundreds of other questions in this book, including:

* The ins and outs of paying for health care services, including Medicare coverage and insurance options.

* How to find the best long-term care, whether at home or in the community, whether you're looking at assisted-living facilities or nursing homes -- and how to pay for it.

* City-by-city ratings for Medicare HMOs and Medicare supplement insurance policies, as well as a guide to how well your state is monitoring nursing homes.

* Easy-to-use worksheets and tables to help you figure out your assets, judge an assisted-living facility, compare home care costs, evaluate an HMO drug plan, and much, much more.

* Comprehensive appendixes to guide you to state-by-state information on insurance counseling, advocacy groups for the elderly, other helpful organizations, and more.

Reviews

Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2009-04-16
Summary: "Excellent source book"

This book spells out the ABC's of the journey you will encounter when seeking healthcare for the elderly.

When I first got thi book I put it it away because I was overwhelmed by the amount of information presented. When faced with the realities of our aging parents, and limited options for their care, one can find themselves already overwhelmed by one emotional crisis after another. Trying to navigate our complex healthcare system is an endeavor that really requires a law degree, business degree in health insurance and other college courses dealing with filling out medicaid/medicare forms.

However, when I was then confronted with real problems and questions from family, this book provided answers which could be found no where else.

Although a bit outdated, this book provides an excellent reference and source book for those faced with healthcare decisions for an elderly family member or relative.

---

Rating: 3 / 5
Date: 2004-08-27
Summary: "Get another book too"

I recommend "Retirement Nightmare" ISBN: 1573927961 . To avoid a guardianship in the State of Florida, and other states, should be of paramount importance. Find out how to protect yourself and your loved ones with alternatives: health care surrogate, durable power of attorney, mediation and more. Consider that if you leave your parents to fend for themselves, and ignore the deterioration associated with aging, a guardian can gain a guardianship over them and their assets, without informing you. That guardianship will nullify the most meticulous of plans. To really cover your aging parents, make sure they create a "Pre-need" guardianship and name someone they trust, this is the only way predators in the retirement homes will not be able to force guardianship on them. Also create an irrevocable trust.

---

Rating: 3 / 5
Date: 2004-05-28
Summary: "some contact numbers wrong"

Basically a great book. Unravels the confusion that you face when trying to plan care for your parents. But I found a few of the phone contact numbers to be wrong. For instance: on page 157: The Transit Hotline Number. This turns out NOT to be a number for consumers but for agencies.

Making your way through the social service maze is hard enough and unfortunately putting wrong numbers in the book doesn't help. Makes you wonder if they didn't check them before publishing.

---

Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2003-10-29
Summary: "Highly recommende!"

Everything you will need to figure out how to take care of a senior is here. The many contact numbers are very useful.

---

Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2002-08-23
Summary: "Great Resource for those with aging parents"

Very little on this subject is written in the daily press despite the growing numbers of seniors in US.

Just as important as understanding your taxes each year another topic we'd love to ignore, facts are provided with an understanding of the complexities of the subject matter.

The issues are addressed in a manner to provide the inside scoop on how to deal with the issues and provides resources. Provides a starting point for drafting your parental plan of action if one is not in place. Found this overall to be a great introduction to these issues.