Emphasis In Long-term Care

Establishing Guardianships For Residents In Skilled Nursing Care

Obtaining guardians for your residents is often necessary to ensure medical decisions are timely and appropriately made and to solve payment problems, including obtaining Medicaid eligibility.

At Kennedy, PC Law Offices, our team of committed attorneys has extensive experience and insight in long-term care facility law. We take the time to understand your facility’s needs and how we can advise you in obtaining guardians for your residents. We represent long-term care facilities in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Ohio.

Our firm can also help family members establish guardianship, in anticipation of long-term care or after a loved one has already entered the nursing home.

Challenges For Long-Term Care Facilities

Our institutional clients face the following issues with long-term care residents who are incapacitated:

  • The inability to timely and appropriately make important health care decisions, including end-of-life decisions
  • The inability to collect information and documents necessary to prove Medicaid eligibility
  • The inability to spend down excess resources to establish Medicaid eligibility
  • The inability to ensure income is promptly and fully paid to your facility

If, before becoming mentally incapacitated, a resident appointed a trustworthy and diligent agent to make decisions about his or her finances and health care, the agent should be able to make those decisions. But what can be done if the resident did not appoint an agent or the agent is not cooperative or is no longer able to make those decisions? In cases like those, the attorneys at Kennedy, PC Law Offices, help our clients cost-effectively and promptly obtain a guardian.

What Happens After A Guardian Is Appointed?

Once a guardian is appointed, our attorneys do not stop there. As you know, proving Medicaid eligibility for your residents is rife with time-sensitive traps that, if not appropriately addressed, can cause the loss of potential Medicaid eligibility. If Medicaid eligibility is sought, our attorneys work with the guardian to ensure that the necessary actions are timely and fully taken to obtain a grant of Medicaid.

Next, suppose an incapacitated resident does not have a guardian and has an urgent need for health care decisions to be made. In urgent medical situations, our attorneys will help you obtain an emergency guardian for your resident if it is the only viable option. Unlike regular guardianships, which often take weeks to complete, an emergency guardian can be appointed within a few days. The attorneys at Kennedy, PC Law Offices, give the highest priority to situations like those.

Finally, suppose you have an incapacitated resident who needs end-of-life decisions made, but there is no one legally authorized to make those decisions. We will guide your staff, the resident and the resident’s relatives through this highly sensitive and important process. If appropriate, we will request that a court appoint a guardian and authorize the guardian to make appropriate end-of-life decisions.

Helping You Provide Essential Care To Your Residents

If one of your residents is incapacitated and needs a guardian to make routine decisions about health care, residential choices, financial matters, Medicaid eligibility or urgent end-of-life health care decisions, we can help. Contact us online or call the attorneys at Kennedy, PC Law Offices, at 877-833-7100 to discuss your case.