Customer Reviews

Everything You Need to Know About Nursing Homes: The Family's Comprehensive Guide to Either Working with the Institution or Finding Care Alternatives

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In Everything You Need To Know About Nursing Homes: The Family's Comprehensive Guide To Either Working With The Institution Or Finding Care Alternatives, journalist, lecturer, teacher, and author Charlotte Digregorio provides a complete, truly definitive, 488-page instruction manual specifically designed for non-specialist general readers who find themselves having to deal with arranging for the care of an invalid elder. Charlotte was made aware of the need for a book like this when her own mother needed institutional care due to having lapsed into a coma. Everything You Need To Know About Nursing Homes is a consumer's guide to dealing with the nursing home bureaucracy, working with the institution to resolve care problems, advocating for an elder's therapies, right-to-life and life support issues, finding alternatives to nursing home placement, caring for a bedridden elder at home and so much more. Special features include a wealth of checklists for basic elder care, house options for the elderly, sample letters to health care personnel regarding care, a summary of effective communication to use with health care personnel. Enhanced with an index, as well as appendices listing organizations and website devoted to care options, a glossary of general halth care and legal terms, nursing abbreviations to aid in reading an elder's medical chart, and a bibliography for further study, Everything You Need To Know About Nursing Homes should be on the shelve of every community library and available to every family member charged with an elder care responsibility.

Though I unfortunately did not discover this book until after my mother's death from septic shock (from what I perceived to be negligence in a non-profit CCRC's nursing unit). Apparently our experiences with the underpaid (and under-appreciated)staff were similar to the author's encounters. This book documents the cultural shortcomings and financially rigged game which gets played against "private pay" clientele at many facilities. It also (fortunately) gives you a way to fight back and document your experiences. It is definitely a worthwhile read for anyone anticipating ever having to place a loved one who cannot communicate their needs in a nursing home.

Now, if we could just get "Family Councils" set up via social media for every nursing facility (so family members can compare notes without travel or duress) and cameras (with privacy waivers when needed) in resident's rooms we may be able to improve care while lowering costs. Bed sores cost SO MUCH to treat...and if you think the "private pay" folks get gamed, can you imagine what happens with the taxpayers?! If we want Medicare to last, we need to suck a lot of costs out of this equation, as so much of the money is WASTED now! Expensive but unaccountable care ... provided by serfs, who have no "career path" and little oversight to speak of. This is SUCH an interesting industry - barriers to entry (a/k/a Cert. Of Need)limit competition, passive clients w/ distracted family members are the target market, the payor is usually the government, and repetitive high $, monthly cash flows are a given. We need to start a consumer advocacy movement around this book!