How Home Health Care Helped My Mom

How to Select the Best Healthcare Facility for a Loved One

by Stanley Pierce

If you are in charge of finding a healthcare facility for a loved one, such as when someone in your life needs short-term rehab, it is very important that you make sure you are doing enough research in order to find the best one. The little bit of time that this will take you will be more than worth it.

Speak Directly to the Admissions Counselor

You will want to make sure that you are taking the time out of your busy schedule to sit down face to face with the admission counselor. Handling all of the communication over the phone or through emails is simply not good enough. You want that face-to-face meeting because that is going to be a lot easier for you to get a feel for him or her and the entire facility as a whole. While you are there, you might want to see whether the admissions counselor can help you meet some of the other staff in the building, such as some of the doctors, nurses, or physical therapists. 

Ask for a Tour of the Facility

It is important to make sure that you are being given a tour of the healthcare facility. If you are denied access to even the common areas, you will want to ask why. There could be a valid reason, such as that it is currently flu season and they do not want to risk the health of all of their residents if you were to bring germs in and spread them throughout the building. However, many healthcare facilities do well at cleaning and sanitizing everything, so you should not have too much of a problem gaining access to the rest of the facility. Make sure that you are looking at the condition of the building, at how well the residents appear to be cared for, and how nice the communication is between the residents and the healthcare-facility staff.

Look for State Licenses

The healthcare facility that you are looking into using needs to be licensed by the state. They also have the need to pass various types of inspections. It is vital that you are taking a few moments to look around for these documents, as they are generally displayed on the wall somewhere. If you are having trouble spotting them on your own, you can always ask to see them.

When you take the right steps, you should have no trouble ensuring that you are finding the best possible facility for your loved one.

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