Friday, December 10, 2010

Welcome to Majestic

After a year at the Garden Terrace Care Center, it became time to move dad to another facility.  We were happy with Garden Terrace, but there is one problem that we just couldn't overcome.  Garden Terrace does not take Medicaid. 

When dad first went into the care center, he did not qualify for medicaid assistance for long-term care.   The savings that he and mom were able save for their retirement meant that dad had too much in assets to qualify.

Essentially what happens is that a snapshot mom and dad's combined assets is taken at the time when dad first went into the nursing home (November 2009).  The assets are divided in half.  Mom gets to keep her portion of the assets for her needs.  However dad's portion must be exhausted before medicaid will kick in.


After a full year of paying for nursing home expenses at thousands of dollars per month, those assets are rapidly vanishing.  In the next couple of months, dad's assets will have been "spent down" to a point where he will qualify for medicaid assistance.

We had looked at the Majestic Care Center back in 2009 when dad first went into the care center, however there weren't any beds available at the time.  Majestic comes highly recommended, and has great ratings on the medicare web site.  It is a smaller facility, compared to Garden Terrace.  Total capacity (40 beds) is about the size of one wing at Garden Terrace. 

For an older facility, it is well kept up.  The staff-to-patient ratio is significantly better than at Garden Terrace.  Majestic is not as fancy as Garden Terrace.  It doesn't have fancy offices or conference rooms.  Its just a nice, quaint, quiet little place that provides good care and service to their patients.

Dad has been there for a month now, and we have been happy with the care he has received there thus far.

We were nervous at first about how dad would react to the change in his surroundings.  Would it make him anxious, or agitated?  Would it cause him to be nervous or upset?

As it turned out, it was a very smooth transition.  Dad's dementia has progressed to the point where he is not really aware of his surroundings.  He didn't appear to notice that he had been moved to a new facility.  He continued to function much has he had done previously at Garden Terrace. 

The smooth transition was a great relief to mom.  She was especially worried about how dad would react to the change.  I don't believe it could have gone any better.  It was certainly an answer to prayers.