Following is the text of our recent e-newsletter. If you would like us to add you to our e-newsletter mailing list, please visit our homepage.
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Dear Friends,
I hope you are all staying home (unless you are an essential worker). I want to share some important points to keep in mind if you are hospitalized during the state of emergency. These apply whether you are hospitalized for COVID-19 specifically, or for any other reason.
1. Keep your Health Care Proxy, HIPAA Statement, and medication list at your fingertips.
(a) If you are a client of ours, then we enrolled you in DocuBank. Take five minutes now to update your medication list. (Really. Five minutes. I updated mine recently, it was very easy.)
(b) Keep copies on your phone. You can save the documents to your Google Drive, you can simply keep them attached to an email, whatever you like, so long as they are accessible to you on your phone. If you would like us to email PDFs of your signed documents to you, or to someone important to you, please call us or email us (doreen@alexislevitt.com).
(c) Keep copies on the back of your front door or on your refrigerator. Many first responders will look in these places for emergency medical papers.
2. Advocate to be coded as “inpatient” rather than “under observation.” If you are in the hospital and then transferred to a rehab, how you were coded at the hospital will make a big difference in payment source for the rehab stay.
3. If you are transferred to rehab and told that you will be paying privately, call us. Under the State of Emergency, some of the usual coverage triggers for payment for rehab have changed. Nursing home billing offices could be – quite understandably – overwhelmed and perhaps not updated on the temporary changes. We can help.
4. Call us if you need a guardianship or conservatorship. For anyone who has not signed a health care proxy or a power of attorney, the hospital (or rehab) may tell you that you need a guardian or conservator. This is a court proceeding handled by an attorney.
(a) It’s possible that the hospital or rehab attorney will handle the guardianship and/or conservatorship for you, for free. If that is the case, be sure to check in with them as to who they are naming to act as the guardian or conservator, and, if you are not happy with their choice, advocate for naming someone you prefer.
(b) If the hospital or rehab tells you that you need to find your own attorney (or if you are not comfortable using their attorney), then please call our office. This is something that we can handle for you.
5. Our office is open. We are working from home, but if you need anything at all, just call or email, and we will get right back to you.
Hang in there, and get outside for plenty of fresh air and sunshine.
– Alexis & Doreen