About The Book
Nursing Homes: How to Find a Good One Or a Few Good Nurses in a Bad One addresses the reality of today’s nursing home care: Good nursing homes are scarce, thus many of our loved ones reside in facilities providing bad care. This guide offers an insider’s solution—find a few good nurses and nurses’ aids.
The book offers insight into identifying a good nursing home and explains why a good nursing home today may be a bad nursing home tomorrow. The myth that a skilled nursing facility, a care and rehabilitation center, nursing center, memory care, etc., offer care superior to a nursing home is laid to rest. Directions on how to find each facility’s state inspection reports and Medicare’s database aid in side-by-side facility comparisons and objective looks at slick marketing claims.
The value of this guide is its simple, direct approach to assuring that a loved one receives the best of care in any facility. Family, friends and the resident are given the tools needed to identify reasonable care and advocate until it is provided. Daily routines affecting each resident are approached in detail, for example, mealtimes, medications, confusion, restraints, incontinence, resident’s rights, and more. Each chapter stands alone to provide a quick reference when problems arise.
Payment is an issue with every nursing home admission. The “Understanding Payment” chapter encourages the reader to take control of their own resources whether private payment, insurance, Medicare, Medicaid or veterans benefits. Paying more at an up-scale facility never assures better care. The author explains why a plain vanilla nursing home may be a better choice for your loved one.
About The Author
Frances Lovett, RN, is the person you would want to have as a guide and mentor if you have a loved one already living in a nursing home or will soon need nursing home care.
The author is a 1961 graduate of Hendrick Memorial Hospital School of Nursing in Abilene, Texas. She practiced her profession in Oklahoma, Kansas, South Carolina, and Texas. Her employment ran the gamut of hospital specialty areas before partnering with a fellow nurse to establish a privately owned home health agency serving mostly Medicare patients.
Frances Lovett’s early nursing home experience began as part time consulting intertwined with hospital and home health practice. The last thirty years of her career were devoted to nursing home care. Positions included staff nurse, supervisor, nurse manager, and Medicare coordinator. She was director of nursing at several facilities. As a certified wound care nurse she consulted in facilities throughout Texas for prevention and treatment of skin ulcers. Later practice included financial auditing, legal consulting and expert testimony for nursing home litigation.
As an employee she gained insight into how budgets and financing impact care through work at the Veterans Administration, state institutions, local governments, private ownership, religious affiliations and multiple corporations. As an employer Frances Lovett shouldered accountability for care and finances.
As a healthcare consumer and caregiver Frances Lovett shepherded her mother through nursing home care, her son through a liver transplant, and her husband through a terminal illness. She is a breast cancer survivor.