Nursing home vs assisted living

Nursing home vs assisted living.

Attorney Robert Hidock: We'll still allow them to preserve their life savings.

Attorney Tom Olsen: Robert, let's make a quick distinction between nursing homes and assisted living because even I get those two things confused sometimes. Assisted living is something completely different than nursing homes.

Attorney Robert Hidock: Usually, yes. Assisted living is when you're older and maybe you have some problems moving, but you can still pretty much carry on your daily activities, but maybe you need some help and assistance. A nursing home is a skilled nursing facility where you can't conduct your daily activities and you need 24-hour care.

Attorney Tom Olsen: We're not talking about paying people to go live in assisted living, we're talking about helping people pay when they have to go into a nursing home.

Attorney Robert Hidock: Correct.

Attorney Tom Olsen: Some assisted living facilities, you can move to an assisted living facility and you can have that independent lifestyle, and when you're ready to, you can move into a nursing home within that assisted living property.

Attorney Robert Hidock: Correct, and then at that point, we would do Medicaid planning because usually those properties also have Medicaid beds as well.

Attorney Tom Olsen: Is there a better term for me to use other than a nursing home? Is that just completely old school? Is there some better way to refer to it these days?

Attorney Robert Hidock: The Medicaid world calls it institutional care, but I think the majority of the people call it a nursing home.

Tom: Okay, that's still the term for it.