Nursing Home Residents May Be Able to Retain Skilled Services Medicaid Benefits
As a result of a proposed settlement agreement reached in litigation, there appears to be clarification of the “improvement standard” as a prerequisite to a nursing home resident continuing to receive Medicare skilled nursing home benefits.
Once implemented, this will enable nursing home residents who have been discharged from a hospital and told that they can no longer receive Medicare benefits to continue to do so provided that they need skilled services, even to maintain level of functioning. According to Marsha Greenfield of LeadingAge,
“The settlement is expected to be approved by the court within the next few months, after a hearing to ensure that the settlement is fair to the plaintiffs. The final settlement is expected to certify a nationwide class of beneficiaries, estimated at 10,000, whose skilled nursing or home health services claims were denied by Medicare prior to Jan. 18, 2011, the filing date for the lawsuit.”
For more information, see the alert, Settlement Reached to End Medicare’s “Improvement Standard”, from the Center for Medicare Advocacy, Inc.
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