The emails come into our inbox. “Please help,” is usually how they start.
What so often follows is the same story with only slightly different details. A 90-something parent, living on social security, has fallen, gone to the hospital and now needs rehabilitation to get up and walking again. And Medicare – the health insurance program that covers nearly all older adults – would pay for the skilled rehab care but for one thing. The hospital never admitted the parent as an “inpatient”, despite a multiple night stay. Instead the parent was admitted under “observation,” which doesn’t count as an inpatient hospitalization. And without three nights of inpatient care, Medicare won’t pay for the subsequent skilled facility services.
