Long Island Elder Law & Estate Planning

A Long Island elder law attorney provides assistance in making plans in case you require nursing home care. There are many plans that need to be made if you could require care in a nursing home at any time during the rest of your life. You will want to make advanced plans to ensure that you can cover the cost of a nursing home as this type of institutional setting is very expensive and not covered by Medicare or most insurance. You will also want to make sure you have researched different nursing home options and found a care facility that is well-managed and that you feel will provide the best possible quality of life.Long Island elder law attorney

There are many nursing homes both good and bad throughout the Long Island area, and the key to finding a quality care facility is to find out about who is running the home and what the home’s reviews and reputation suggest about the care that residents receive. A Long Island elder law attorney can assist you in conducting research and doing your due diligence to determine if a nursing home is high quality enough for you or not.

Former Ellis CEO Is Named as Nursing Home Administration

The question of who is running the nursing home can make a big difference because administrators set policies related to staffing and a host of other issues that can affect the lives of senior residents. In determining who is running care facilities, it’s important to note that this can change over time

Just recently, for example, the Daily Gazette reported that the former CEO of Ellis Medicine would be taking over as the administration of a nursing home in Guilderland. The facility is a 127-bed facility that is located within Guilderland Center.

The CEO that is taking over has indicated that administering the nursing home will be on a smaller scale than past jobs and projects that he has been involved in. While he has spent a substantial amount of his career working in a hospital environment, he believes that he is helping to create a real home for the seniors who live in the care facility.

The CEO is a native of Long Island and brings 40 years of experience working in hospitals to the job. After retiring as the Ellis CEO in 2015, he worked for the Office of Health Insurance Programs for the Department of Health to help implement the Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment Program that had been put in place by the state to try to improve the health of the population. He then moved back into a patient care facility by taking on the role of administrator at The Guilderland nursing home.

The Guilderland Center Nursing Home, unfortunately, has not had a great reputation in the past. The care facility had a history of labor problems, received bad ratings from regulators, and was even classified as one of the worst nursing home’s in the nation by Medicare and Medicaid, landing it a spot on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Focus Facility list.

Hopefully, the facility can potentially be turned around new with a new administrator, although it still has only a 1-star rating. Substantial physical upgrades have also been made, in addition to bringing on the former Ellis CEO to try to improve conditions for patients. It remains to be seen how the facility changes and whether there are substantial improvements.

Contact a Long Island Elder Law Attorney

While there are many good nursing home administrators, and there are some who make sincere attempts to do a good job, there is no guarantee that every home will be managed by a caring and compassionate person who wants to enhance the quality of life of residents.

There are many care facilities, particularly those owned and operated by out-of-state conglomerates, where the senior residents of the nursing home are seen as nothing more then commodities. Often, seniors in these types of facilities suffer from various types of abuse and neglect, including chemical restraint practices involving seniors being drugged with antipsychotics they don’t need just to make them more docile. Avoiding these facilities is vital to ensure that a senior does not end up a victim.

Mark S. Eghrari & Associates, PLLC can help seniors to research nursing home options, find a high quality care facility, and make plans to pay for care. To find out more about the assistance we can offer in finding a nursing home, join us for a free seminar. You can also give us a call at (631) 265-0599 or contact us online at any time.

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About Mark S. Eghrari, Estate Planning Attorney

Mark S. Eghrari is an attorney in private practice in Smithtown, New York. He has been in practice since 1988. Mark S. Eghrari provides extensive estate and tax planning services to individuals and businesses. Mr. Eghrari’s primary focus is helping clients avoid probate, minimize or eliminate Federal and State Estate taxes and protect their assets from the high cost of nursing care, if they become ill.