Health and Fraud Protection for Seniors & All Ages

Right now! Yes, right now. Take these easy steps to protect your interest. I will write another article to this later on this month.

Here are basic ways to protect yourself and protect your interests:

1. Always know where your glasses are and where your hearing aid is (if you use these helps). Always have extra pairs of glasses in a few places just in case you need them. (You can purchase glasses at dollar stores if you cannot afford the extras).

2. When signing documents, try and have another disinterested or neutral person help you or read the document to you, just in case the documents are not good ones for you to sign, by having someone else there, you are more protected.

3. Remember to trust your own inner instinct, your gut instinct when it comes to important things and also when it comes to regular things.

4. If you are admitted into a Rehabilitation and Care Center, make sure that you have all your legal papers filled out before you get there. There are some unscrupulous facilities that will try and take advantage of you in your vulnerable state. So, do not sign any papers inside these facilities unless there are family members present or unless your own lawyer is present. (Do not accept any lawyer or legal representative that any Rehab and care center gives to you as these people are not neutral and they are not looking out for your interests). Have your own lawyer or family members present when signing all documents.

5. One of the other fraud-like transactions or actions that some physical rehabilitation and care centers do are the actions of permitting residents to acquire bedsores --this giving the patients more reasons to be treated long-term in their facilities. If a resident goes in the facility for short-term care, sometimes unscrupulous management of the facility permits even the short-term patients to miss therapy. They permit that under the guise of freedom of the resident, instead of telling them they do not need to be there without therapy, they let them stay in the facility but transfer them, against their will, up to the long-term care unit. Once there the bad management insists that the residents file for Medicaid to cover long-term treatment. Once they apply for Medicaid and get accepted for Medicaid, the facility has a life-long income for that resident. The facility is guaranteed income simply because the person is long-term. These bad facilities try to fill their long-term beds quickly, even by taking short-term residents and putting them in their long-term units. Here is what happens. The short-term resident is shipped to the long-term place --same building, and there, once there, the staff lets the person rot. Literally, they bring breakfast to them in bed and they no longer have the person come out to the dining room. Once the patient is permitted to lay dormant, day after day after day, that person --who was originally in there for short-term care, develops bedsores that never heal . The bedsores come from laying in bed. The bad facilities permit the patient to lay in bed, to miss therapy, and to develop more bedsores. This is a vicious cycle and the resident is not even aware of what has happened. Permitting the facility to get Medicaid for this short-term patient --who has been turned into long-term due to negligence and lack of care at the facility --is what keeps these bad facilities going. After all, private-pay patients will not choose this place since they are so negligent. And the Medicaid residents have no choice of what happens to them. I will write articles on how to avoid this vicious cycle but know that this exists and this is actually happening today in at least one rehabilitation and care center in Staten Island, New York, USA. Is this happening in the center where you're staying or where you have relatives staying? Read my other articles to find out how to avoid things like this.

6. Remember to protect yourself at all times when inside of a facility. Always, whenever possible have a phone connection and have an internet connection. It is vitally important that you be connected with the outside world if you are living in or temporarily residing in a physical rehabilitation and care center or in a nursing home. It does not matter how long you think your stay will be, you need to be connected at all times--to someone on the outside. You need to have visitors. And if someone tries to stop you from visiting a patient, you need to step up contact by writing to Administrators and by writing to the Medicaid complaint department to rectify the situations. For example, once in a Staten Island place some family members were telling the staff that the resident was developing bedsores. As a result of this complaint, the facility Administrators stopped the family from visiting and the patient got worse and worse. Now, with the family not visiting, the facility permitted the patient to rot in bed and to develop three and four and five more ulcers and bedsores from lack of care, from negligence and from malpractice practices. If anyone tries to stop you from visiting patients or residents inside a facility, immediately contact the ombudsman, the Attorney General of your state and the consumer affairs office and any other office that will assist you. Find a lawyer who will take your case and when you have time, sue that facility for all the damage that they have done to you and to the patients and the rest of the family.

Take these steps:

Insure that you will know what you are signing - all the time, by making sure that you have two or three pairs of eyeglasses. Never, ever sign anything without your glasses.

Protect your other senses -- by checking your hearing now, checking your eyesight regularly, and knowing your own home.

I write this because in the past, I met a woman who owned a home. ( I knew she owned the home because I met her shortly after she purchased it). However, that woman had pride and did not want to wear a hearing aid or wear glasses).

As a result of her not wearing glasses, some unscrupulous relatives of hers had her sign papers that signed her home over to them. This woman did not even know that she no longer owned her own home. The relatives, nieces of hers, trusted nieces, put the papers in front of her and made her sign them. She did not know that she was signing papers that gave the home to the nieces. At the time, the woman had no friends around her and there was no one around to protect her interests. (I found out about it AFTER this happened).

She was isolated with the nieces , who were bringing her food and other things. But she had no knowledge whatsoever that the nieces had her sign the house over to them. This woman thought that she was still living in her own home.

How could she have avoided that? She could have avoided it by using her glasses. What happened was that she couldn't find her glasses that day and she must have trusted her nieces and she signed whatever they told her to sign. So , that's how she lost her home.

Will you lose everything because you have no eyeglasses and can't see?

Protect yourself. (In this true story, the woman had no reason to not trust the nieces, but seems she did but didn't know it. They had always been trustworthy to her most of her life, so she trusted them and signed her house over to them without her even knowing what she was signing.

(I found about this after the fact, years later after it happened. As it turned out , the lady died many years after that. The nieces let her live in the house and pretended it was her house, and then later on she died).

I found out about it after the fact so that I was unable to help this woman. But you , reading this story , can help yourself and make sure that nothing like this happens to you.

The woman lost her home just because she lost her eyeglasses. KEEP your glasses where you know they are and always have two extra pairs around the house so that you will not have to sign papers without your glasses. You could be signing your home away and not know it.

But do not let this happen to you.

Melinda Thomas, an author has read and studied psychology, art, and consumerism for many years. And has attended courses and colleges in one of the largest cities in America.

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