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Featured Article 
Many nursing home evictions are just another form of elder abuse
By Susan B. Geffen 
I very recently had the displeasure of stopping a nursing home eviction dead in its tracks.
Why would someone who wrote a book called "Take That Nursing Home and Shove It!" do something like that your ask?
The answer is that nursing home residents who are transferred, "dumped" or evicted from long-term care facilities are victims of nursing home abuse. Whether I or you like it, in many cases this has become the individual's home and/or it is all the individual/family can afford. You should know your rights going in and then you will not have to hire someone like me to fight for you.
Rather than have to hire me, I would rather see families who are struggling with a multitude of issues, including how they will pay for care, have the tools at their disposal; you can fight back.
Most of my cases against nursing homes feature me representing a family because the nursing home has applied the wrong standard for Medicare reimbursement.
I might have said this many times before but it is very much worth repeating.
Let's say that you went into the hospital because you had a stroke. Then, the hospital discharges you to a skilled nursing facility to rehabilitate because the right side of your body is compromised; you can't walk, hold a pen and have a difficult time expressing yourself. Medicare will pay for the first 20 days of your stay and then up to 100 days with a co-pay of $157.50 a day (some people buy supplemental insurance which will take care of this co-pay). The facilities like the Medicare reimbursement rate.
If before your 100 days of Medicare has run out, the facility tells you that you have reached your maximum improvement (in other words, you will not get better with more physical, occupational or speech therapy (covered services under Medicare Part A), it is applying the wrong standard. Skilled nursing care providers cannot stop benefits when they have determined that the patient's condition is not "improving." This is standard does not even appear in the Medicare rules and it is prohibited by a Supreme Court decision. In Jimmo v Sebelious, a federal court judge approved a settlement agreement to prevent the improper denial or discontinuation of Medicare coverage. The Jimmo settlement agreement clears the way to making Medicare coverage available for skilled services to maintain an individual's condition, regardless of the potential to improve.
Even though this ruling came down in 2013, the "improvement standard" still seems to be the defacto policy in every facility.
Why is this a recurring theme?
The answer is easy. The facility is afraid of losing its coverage by keeping someone who does not qualify and then they are out of pocket or they smell a poor person and do not want them to go onto Medi-Cal whose reimbursement rates are ½ that of Medicare or private pay. And, once a person is in application status with Medi-Cal, they cannot be evicted.
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