How To Remedy Being Discharged From A Hospital Prematurely As A Medicare Patient?

Perhaps you have an individual within your family who has been hospitalized, though they will be discharged rather soon. What does one do in this situation? Maybe you’re not sure about assisted living, home health care, or even nursing facilities. Chances are you didn’t even know that the person would be released from the hospital in such a short amount of time.

Now you might be panicking, and you might be trying to figure out exactly what it is you should be doing in this situation. Fortunately the hospital will probably give you a list of rehab clinics. Unfortunately they are not going to help you choose a clinic. You might feel like you have no time to render this decision, and you might even feel like you’re being rushed. This may push you into making a fast decision, but you really have more time than you think.

Because Medicare is a government run organization, they are being pressured by Congress to save money in any way possible. Unfortunately the best way to save money is by doing early discharges. Now a hospital must provide you a Notice of Noncoverage, which will state that a hospital needs to provide you with adequate notice before discharging you. Adequate notice being three days. It doesn’t sound like very long, but it will at least afford you time to get your affairs in order.

If you have not been given such a notice, make it your personal mission to ensure that you do. Sure they might play dumb or even deny you at first, but if you keep insisting, they will give you the time you need. It might seem inconvenient and rude, but the person you love is in the hospital, and you need to make sure that they get the care they need. This involves you making the right decision.

Hospitals really like to discharge Medicare patients way too early now, which means that over the last four decades average stay in a hospital from people 65 and older has dropped from–.2 days to only 6.4 days. And this trend will keep going like that.

The problem that hospitals have is the fixed fee system from Medicare. This means that a Hospital will be billed the same amount for every patient, no matter what happens to be wrong with them. The longer a patient stays, the more money the hospital will have to pay. If the stay is shorter, the hospital will be making much more money.

It’s not about care, it’s all about numbers and money. What you need to know is that when you admit into a hospital you also sign a paper with your rights as a patient, which keeps the hospital from discharging you too early. So you need to make a copy of it. It’s called “An Important Message From Medicare — Your Rights While You Are A Medicare Hospital Patient.”

The rights include the Notice of Noncoverage, and having this will stop the hospital from discharging you early. You will have the three days, and they will not be able to charge you. So long as you have not been provided the Notice of Noncoverage, you will be able to stay in the hospital.

In the meantime, you can appeal the decision of the hospital. This can be done by contacting the PRO in charge of filing appeals, but you need to make sure you do it as fast as possible. The claims take some time to process. Knowing your rights and having some nerve will take you a long way.

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