Make Nursing Home Medicaid Easier – When To Apply

When do you apply for nursing home Medicaid?

One of the most important points I try to make here on TexasTitle19.com is that you have to know the Medicaid eligibility rules. When you don’t know all of the rules the odds of winning your case go down.  When you don’t know all of the rules the likelihood of a financial loss goes up. When you do know the rules you have a much better chance to achieve the kind of result you are looking for. The timing of when to apply for nursing home Medicaid is one of the first rules you need to know because it impacts everything else, including asset protection.

Many people come to me with this plan in their head: they will apply for Medicaid before their parent or spouse enters the nursing home. They are probably thinking that if they can get an approval before incurring those nursing home rates of over $150/day then the whole process is very low risk. Well, unfortunately Texas nursing home Medicaid applications do not work that way.

One of the requirements to be approved for nursing home Medicaid is that the applicant has to already be admitted to a nursing home.  On top of that, they have to be in the nursing home for over 30 consecutive days before it can be approved. This makes it impossible to get an approval for nursing home Medicaid before entering a nursing home. This also means that if you mess up the eligibility process you are going to end up paying that nursing home cost of $150/day.

If this application procedure is news to you then I strongly recommend you pause and think about the any number of other rules and regulations that you may not be aware of or completely understand.

The stakes are high in your nursing home Medicaid case. It would be great if the system allowed you to get an approval before entering a nursing home but it doesn’t work that way. So as a result your parent or spouse’s medical and financial security hangs in the balance of the outcome of the process. Make sure you know how to get to the end of the road you are headed down before you start racking up those bills.

Check out my other recent posts on nursing home Medicaid in Houston, The Woodlands, and all of Texas.

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