By Barry Zimmer on October 24th, 2019 in Elder Law
When you are contemplating the latter stages of your life, you should understand all the facts so that you can make the appropriate preparations. Many people are surprised to hear that most senior citizens will eventually require living assistance. In fact, the figure is 70% according to the United States Department of Health and Human Services.
Of course, there are different levels of care that can be needed. Some seniors can rely on family members and/or friends to provide a helping hand when it is necessary. There are also licensed in-home caregivers and homemakers that can be called upon, but they come with a price tag that is surprisingly significant.
How much are we talking about? The median annual charge for homemaker services in the Cincinnati area was $48,048 in 2018, and the figure was $50,336 for a home health aide.
Believe it or not, it costs about the same amount of money to spend a year in a one-bedroom unit in an assisted living facility. The median cost for a private room in a nursing home goes up to just over $100,000. It should be noted that all of these expenses are expected to rise over the coming years.
There are nearly 1000 nursing homes in the state of Ohio, so it is not hard to find a facility. Identifying the right one is another matter, and there are a handful of general factors that you should take into consideration if you are looking for a nursing home for yourself or a loved one.
Obviously, the exact location will be important, but the convenience factor should be weighed against the other elements. We shared the median cost, but each facility is different, so you would do well to conduct cost comparisons. The services that are provided are another key piece to the puzzle, because the needs of each respective individual are going to be different.
At the end of the day, nothing is more important than the quality of care that a nursing home resident can expect to receive. The state of Ohio has published a Long-Term Care Consumer Guide that is chock-full of extremely useful information that you can use to compare quality indicators.
They have inspection reports, facility details, family satisfaction surveys, and resident satisfaction surveys that you can explore during the decision-making process. There is a facility search tool on the Consumer Guide site that you can use to compare nursing homes in your area based on the services that they provide.
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We have shared a bit of information in this blog post, and there are countless additional entries that you can read to learn about other important estate planning and elder law topics. In addition to the blog, we have other resources on this website, including our library of special reports.
They cover many different subjects, and you can access any or all of them free of charge right now. To check out the titles, visit our special reports page, and click on any report that you would like to read.
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