How To Find An Iowa Nursing Home

With over 450 nursing homes in located within the state of Iowa, finding just the right one for your family member’s needs could be a challenging endeavor. Ideally your search for long-term care should take place before it is ever needed. Unfortunately, many of us do not start the process of researching and visiting nursing homes for our family member or loved one until a medical event takes place or a worsening of conditions such as Dementia or Alzheimer’s disease make it too difficult to care for a family member at home.  Whatever your situation may be, you want to make sure that you find a good nursing home for your loved one so you can be sure they are well-cared for.

Slow Down

Slow down is the most important advise you will receive. Although you may feel rushed to select a nursing home, experts say, slow down and take your time when you are looking for a reliable nursing home. This is one of the most important decisions you will ever make for someone else so do not feel pressured into making a hasty choice on which nursing home is best suited to your loved one’s needs and well-being. Ask friends, clergy, the primary care physician, the geriatric physician, the hospital’s discharge office or the social work office for referrals and recommendations. If your family member is hospitalized, you have a right to tell the hospital that your family member is not ready for discharge and you/they need more time to able to secure reliable long-term care that meets their needs.

Key Factors When Choosing a Nursing Home

• Location

Find a nursing home that is a medicare and medicaid certified facility that is closest to the person who will be visiting the nursing home resident the most often. Nursing home residents that are visited frequently by family and friends have better care and tend to be happier and healthier. When family and friends are close by, they participate in the care planning and can respond to emergencies. A helpful web site to look for locations and compare nursing home facilities in your area is The Official U.S. Government Site for Medicare.
(Note: just because a nursing home facility is medicare and medicaid certified does not mean that it has a Government endorsement of good quality nursing home care, nor does it mean the facility has not had  serious nursing home violations in the past).

• Onsite Facility Visits

Nothing compares to actually going to each nursing home. After you have narrowed your potential nursing homes down to the closest locations to the person who will be visiting the nursing home resident, make appointments to personally visit each of those nursing homes. Just because a nursing home facility looks great on the outside, doesn’t mean it is “right” on the inside. If at all possible, schedule your tour appointment during dinner time and ask to have a meal there too. Poor quality food is a top complaint among nursing home residents. If the quality of the food and the food choices are bad, residents become malnourished and unhappy. As you do your tour, look at the overall well being of the residents. Are they parked in front of the TV? Are the residents alone in wheel chairs in the hallways? How do the residents appear to you in terms of health, cleanliness and the level of interaction between residents and staff? By paying close attention to the little things, you will learn a lot about the quality of the staffing at that facility.

• Stay Organized in Your Search

During you nursing home research and the onsite visits, use a checklist to keep track of all the positives and negatives of each nursing home. The checklist provided by The Official U.S. Government Site for Medicare is helpful.  It contains all the important items to look for and ask about so you wont miss anything and it will help you stay organized and focused.  Print out a copy for each nursing home you are planning to visit and use it to stay organized!

Iowa Nursing Home Ratings.  Compare Iowa’s more than 400 nursing homes that are receiving Medicare and Medicaid payments and their rating on a 1-to-5 star basis for the past two years.

Click here to read the Iowa Nursing Home Resident Rights.

If you have concerns about a particular nursing home or one of its employees, contact Iowa nursing home resident rights attorney John T. Hemminger at 515-283-2116.