If you have someone in your family who has been admitted to a hospital and they are going to be discharged way too soon, what do you do? How do you get them the care they need afterward? Of course the hospital was never meant to be long term but you certainly didn’t expect your loved one to be discharged so easily!

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.

Medicare is a health insurance plan that is sanctioned by the government. This means that Congress is actually putting pressure on them. One of the best ways for them to save money is by discharging patients way too early. Hospitals are required to provide a Notice of Noncoverage. This notice indicates that a hospital MUST give you three days of warning before a patient can be discharged from the hospital.

So if the hospital has not provided you this notice, you need to make sure that they do. They might say no at first, but so long as you insist, they should relent and provide you that time. Keep in mind that you are here because someone you love is in the hospital. It is up to you to make sure that they get the care they need, and you need to make sure you have enough time to come to a real 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 main problem is he fixed fee system that Medicare has in place for hospitals. Hospitals get the same fee for each patient, independently from the severity of their health condition. If a patient stays longer, the extra cost has to be paid by the hospital. So the shorted their stay, the more money the hospital makes.

Patient care is no issue in the face of money. So when you enter the hospital there will be a paper that you sign. The paper will acknowledge your patient rights, and one such right is the right to not be discharged on a whim. You need to make a copy of the document: “An Important Message From Medicare — Your Rights While You Are A Medicare Hospital Patient.”.

One of those rights is your right to get that “Notice of Noncoverage”. If you have this, then the hospital will not be able to discharge you until the standard three days are up, and they cannot charge you for the service. If you have not received that note yet, then you can stay in the hospital with your medicare plan.

If you wish, you can appeal the hospital’s decision simply by writing or calling the PRO in charge of filing the appeals for Medicare. Now you want to make sure that you do this rather quickly because these claims take a while to process. Know your rights, and don’t feel bad about complaining!

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