Case Study : June
June, a woman in her late 70s, called us in the midst of a crisis. She had recently placed her husband in a board-and-care facility. He suddenly became so sick she had to put him in a nursing home -- temporarily, she thought. Then, she was told he was so sick he would be unable to return home, and would spend the rest of his life in the nursing home.
June was overwhelmed: she was very distraught about her husband’s health, extremely worried about her finances and about her ability to survive on her own. She was also very concerned about problems with his care in the nursing home and about its costs; during one of her husband’s previous stays in a nursing home they had applied for Medi-Cal benefits to cover the nursing home costs, but had been denied. Adding to her problems, the board and care owed her $1,100 and was refusing to give it to her. She had requested help from the office of the state Ombudsman, which was responsible for looking into the kinds of problems she was having. They said they couldn’t help her, but because they had heard about us in a seminar we hosted with UFCS, they referred June to Aging Solutions.
Immediately, we educated her on her and her husband’s rights in the nursing home, and worked out a plan for her to be able to protect those rights. We contacted the Ombudsman’s office and worked with them to warn the board-and-care facility that they were unlawfully withholding payment of the $1,100. They paid the money in full.
We referred June to a financial planner and an attorney to review her financial, insurance and legal affairs. We then worked closely with both professionals to re-apply for Medi-Cal nursing home benefits. Eventually, the application was approved. June recovered her $1,100, and was able to keep $3,000 a month for her own needs. With the help of the financial planner, she was able to preserve more than $100,000 in assets for her own care.
We provided 4.5 hours of service over a period of 3 months.