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She is on Medicaid. Both time she has made it to the top of the list at a different home. The home she is in makes it sound like she is horrible. Stuff they never discuss with us until we try to move her. The new home turns her away. She has Alzheimer’s. She is wheel chair bound and they keep her pretty doped up. They recently let us move her to another home owned by them. Which turned out to be worse than their other home. She is so far from family. It’s an hour and a half one way. What can we do?

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Are the two homes which turned her away claiming they do not have the appropriate level of care for her? What specific reason are they giving for turning her away after letting her be put on the wait list? Did her condition worsen while she was waiting? Even if it did not, are the new facilities trying to claim they didn't know her true condition - until her current facility disclosed it just as the move was about to take place? I've heard multiple stories on the forum here about wait lists for Medicaid beds, so I'd assume the facility your grandmother is currently in has a wait list as well? If so, I wonder what their motivation would be to sabotage your grandmother taking her care (and the Medicaid reimbursement) elsewhere if there's a wait list of people who could take her place? Anyway, you could get her full medical record from the current facility and take it personally to one of the new facilities and ask them what part of the diagnosis is specifically causing the problem & why they cannot handle that type of care. Once you find out what's true and what's not, you'll know how to proceed with getting your grandmother moved.
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Do you ever have Care Conference meetings about your grandmother with the people at the NH? You’re supposed to have them every 3 months or whenever you, as the family member, call one. I would ask for FaceTime or Skype so you’re not just a bunch of faceless voices on the phone. Or, better yet, if someone from the family could actually take the time to drive there and meet with them in person. Do you know what meds Grandma is on and for what? Did the house doctor prescribe something to “dope her up” or do you suspect the nursing home of doing this on their own without consulting you? My mom’s facility let me know EVERYTHING my mom got, from band-aids to aspirin to Alzheimer’s meds. I believe they’re mandated by the state to notify family about this kind of thing.

Do they have Grandma’s behavior documented on paper? They can’t just say that she’s a problem and not document it. If she attacks someone or is attacked by someone, it has to be documented and reported. Ask to see the paperwork on what she’s done to cause other facilities to deny her. Ask any of the other facilities you’ve applied to what documents they saw from Grandma’s facility now that caused them to deny her admission. Hearsay isn’t good enough. You need to see the paperwork.

Someone from your family needs to take some time off and go to Grandma’s facility. Who did the original tour to place her there? Wasn’t it noticed back then that the place was so awful? Why was she placed there? Was it a hurry-up kind of thing? There’s a good chance nothing will get solved unless someone from her family puts in a personal appearance.
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All four of us are telling you the same thing, Schoch, and that is that someone from your family needs to do some research and find out what’s going on. Facilities do not keep patients as “prisoners” as you’ve stated on other threads, especially when they claim those patients are difficult . They ask family to remove them. There are enough waiting lists for Medicaid beds that there’s no way they’d do that.

As we’ve said, you need to go to Grandma’s facility personally. Go calmly and with a firm idea of the information you need. Do not make unfounded accusations that you can’t back up with documentation. And, don’t accept any information from them that they can’t back up with documents of their own. Facilities run on paperwork and red tape. As DeeAnna said, keep us updated.
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Ahmijoy makes some excellent points about the Care Conference meetings and about the medications. Who is your Grandmother’s Durable-POA and/or POA for Healthcare? Has that person requested any medication or medical records from either nursing home?

Go to Medicare’s Nursing Home Compare website and look up the nursing homes that your Grandmother has been in and also look for a list of other nursing homes close to where you live.

www.medicare.gov/nursinghomecompare/search.html?

The Nursing Home Compare has detailed information about every Medicare- and Medicaid- certified nursing home in the country. The information does not tell you all that you need to know but you can find out whether the nursing home had some problems that were severe enough to warrant a warning by the state and federal government.

Since your grandmother has Alzheimer’s, then she most likely needs to be in a Memory Care Unit. Look for nursing homes that have this type of nursing units. There are two types: locked and monitored (the door to the unit is unlocked but the resident or their wheelchair wears a monitoring device {WanderGuard} that activates an alarm or causes the door to the Memory Care Unit to close if the resident gets too close to the door.

Let us know how your search for a new nursing home is going. God Bless.
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I must admit, Schoch, that I don't like the sound of what this care home group has been up to. I'm not quick to assume the worst but they do seem very keen to hang on to your grandmother's fees, hm.

Having said that, there are excellent reasons *not* to move a person with Alzheimer's Disease unless you absolutely have to. Changes in their environment can upset them a lot, and that can have knock-on effects on their physical wellbeing too.

If the standards of the NH are as bad as you describe, and they do sound bad no matter how many allowances one tries to make, then consider using your state's formal complaints procedure. And yes, visit a lot more.

I wouldn't spend a lot of time going over previous attempts to break her out. It's history, it's gone. Better to focus on where you go from here: whether that's working with the current NH on improving her care and her condition, or starting from scratch to find a better facility and working *closely* with them to get her moved.
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I wish I could put pics up. I would show you how bad this place is. It wouldn’t bother me so much if she was getting good care. Last week I visited and the air wasn’t working. It was so hot and my grandma had food in her hair. Her face was dirty and her finger nails are always black. We are nice to the people and we don’t complain because we are afraid she will get back lash. The STNAs are not friendly toward us or the patients. It should be a crime to treat our old people like this. I just want to get her into a decent place that is close to me and my sister. I believe the more visits the better the care.
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We have all given you some good suggestions and I am sorry that you are having such problems with the nursing homes in Michigan. Unfortunately I would need to read your grandmother's medical records to give you better and more appropriate suggestions.

Michigan has a Faith Community Nurse or Parish Nurse organization (which is connected with local churches and synagogues) that is very active. Maybe you could contact a Parish Nurse near your Grandmother's nursing home and ask her/him for suggestions. Someone who can put their eyes on the situation. Google "Parish Nurse - Michigan" and see what happens.
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Thank you for all the advice. I will look into a parish nurse.
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Just keep trying. Get her on more lists. Get copies of her records from the current home and find out what is in them that is causing a problem
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Ok I got a little more information. The NH my Grandma is in is a full medicaid NH. They don’t have a waiting list. We were able to her in there right away and we were able to get her in the other one right away. The place is called Magnum care. She is currently in the Monroe Mich one. The last home was ready to take her even after meeting her, until they went in and met with Magnum care they came out and said she wasn’t a good fit. The first home we had lined up said they couldn’t take her because she was a wanderer, and had sundowners, and like I said before. A week later they took her out of the memory care unit and put her in the regular care unit. I do believe they don’t want to let her go, and they are making it impossible for us to move her. The places we were trying to move her to have waiting list and only have so many Medicaid beds.
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