What is the difference between a skilled nursing facility and a nursing home?

Attorney Tom Olsen: Robert, we've historically called them nursing homes. We know the technical term a skilled nursing facility. When you're talking to new clients and you use that term skilled nursing facility, do they seem to know automatically what you're talking about?

Attorney Robert Hidock: No, most of the time you have to tell them it's a nursing home.

Tom: Okay, nursing home. Skilled Nursing Facility is a much better word or description of it, and I'm sure the facilities themselves wish that people could move in that direction.

Robert: Yes, very much so, and the biggest confusion is a lot of clients think that there's state-run Medicaid nursing homes that's where we'd go to, and that simply is not the case. You'll have a rehab facility that's also a skilled nursing home that has private pay beds, as well as Medicaid pay beds. They're all still getting the same price and they're actually going to get the same level of care because the floor staff is not allowed to know who is on Medicaid and who is not, so no doctors, no nurses aides are going to treat somebody different because they're on Medicaid.

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