Many families must face the issue of paying for senior care. While some seniors have the finances to pay for rehabilitation and/or nursing care, many others lack the necessary resources.
Georgia Carroll, the business office coordinator for the Golden Living Center in Riverchase, says that 30 to 50 percent of the residents who come to the facility need some kind of financial assistance. “Most of these seniors have Medicare or a replacement policy, but many have exhausted their Medicare days and have no other resources,” Carroll says. When this happens, Carroll and her team offer in-house assistance with a Medicaid application. “We try to start the application process within the first week, so that we can stay ahead of the game.”
Carroll says that honest communication between the facility staff and the patient’s family is necessary for the process to work. “The facility must be up front about the cost of their services, and the family must be honest about whether they have the money to pay,” she says. “If neither of these happens, the relationship will not work.”
“It is also important that the patient’s physician understand that the family will get what it pays for,” Carroll says. “Some facilities are less expensive than others, but the level of care may not be as good and the accommodations not as nice. I recommend that physicians encourage the family to tour facilities and to not be afraid to check out five-star facilities. There may be aid and assistance available to make one of these places affordable.”
Carroll’s team will help families look for additional resources to help pay for the level of care they want for their loved one. “For instance, I know that Medicare and Medicaid cover home health care at 100 percent. There are so many avenues to pursue. All they have to do is ask,” she says. “I know this is a complicated process, but giving up is not an option. Take time to ask questions, and people will help.”
Bill Cockrell, Chief Administrator for CardioVascular Associates, P.C. in Birmingham, says medical bills are one of the reasons that seniors exhaust their financial resources. “In cardiac medicine, you deal with high medical bills for patients who have had heart attacks, stents and major diagnostic studies. You hope insurance will cover all of these services, but chronic illness can run into big expense,” he says.
Cockrell says his office will try to work with patients who have trouble paying medical bills, but many won’t return calls when they’re contacted about an outstanding bill. “If they call us back, we try to set them up on a payment schedule,” he says. “We will also help them find resources if they call us back, but if we can’t contact them, we are forced to start the collections process after a period of time.”
Cockrell found himself on the other side of this issue recently when his mother had a stroke. He has tried to navigate the system to find resources to help his mother and discovered that the process is not an easy one. “I’ve found information online, but the information doesn’t always include all the nuances involved in obtaining a particular benefit. You don’t realize that sometimes you can offset one thing with another to qualify for a resource,” he says. “There are no simple instructions out there.”
Bea Picou, owner of Med Concepts in Birmingham, realizes the difficulty of finding your way through this complicated system and is starting a non-profit organization to help people find resources to pay for health care and long-term care. Since 1999, her company has worked for physician practices as an outsourced customer service department to take calls and to follow up with patients about bill payment. “We’re the good guys they go to before they go to the bad guys,” she says with a laugh.
According to Picou, financial need among seniors is a “humongous” problem. “One practice we work for has thousands of people who owe money, and there are thousands of practices,” she says. “We work 9,000 accounts a month who owe money, and most of those patients don’t pay because they don’t have the money.”
Faced with wanting to help these people and wondering what she could do, Picou wanted to give physicians and patients one place to go to find resources to pay for health care. “There are a lot of resources out there, but no centralized location to find the help. That’s what FinishWorks, Inc. is for,” she says. “We want to be like a social worker for physicians.”
Picou is putting a questionnaire in physician offices where patients can check what they need, from spiritual assistance to food, to money for rent, etc. “When we know what a person needs, we can put them in touch with the people who can help,” she says.
The organization is still in the development stages, but Picou expects to receive the organization’s 501 (c)(3) letter soon. FinishWorks already has a toll-free number that physicians can call if they have patients who need help – 866-677-7181.
“The good Lord says if we have the opportunity to help those in need, we’re supposed to help,” Picou says. “If we can help one person with this process, we want to do it."
