OCR Text |
Show Full time nursing care available to Medicare patients Don Donaldson, District Manager of the Provo Social Security office reminds Medi- I care beneficiaries that Medicare Medi-care covers full time skilled nursing care following hospitalization. hospi-talization. The . doctor may have the patient sent to a qualified nursing home or spe-cial spe-cial section of a hospital, known as an Extended Care Facility. However, Mr. Donaldson Donald-son points out that admission to an extended care facility must occur within 14 days after af-ter hospital discharge. The minimum hospital stay to qualify for extended care j benefits is three days. ' For Medicare to pay for this extended care, the treatment must be for a condition for which the patient is treated in the hospital. The Medicare payment ends when the doctor doc-tor decides that the special full time skilled nursing care and related services are no longer needed. In any case, payment ends with the 100th day in the extended care facility fa-cility wen though the special services may still be needed. "For the first 20 days in the facility", Mr. Donaldson said, "Medicare pays for all covered services. After that, it pays all by $5.50 a day for the next 80 days." Extended care facilities under un-der the Medicare program must meet standards of quality quali-ty care. |