Medicaid and In-Home Care – Washington

Medicaid program hailed, By Paris Achen, July 14, 2011, The Columbian: “After a monthlong convalescence in a skilled-nursing facility, 67-year-old Sandra Morgan relishes every day she spends at home. Four years ago, complications from a surgery to remove cancer landed Morgan in Vancouver’s Heritage Health and Rehabilitation Center. (It closed in 2007 to make room for the state Highway 500 and St. Johns Road interchange.) ‘I had visited a nursing home before, but you have no idea what it’s like until you’ve been there,’ Morgan says. ‘People are in different stages of life and death. One lady screamed into the night.’ There was no privacy. Morgan says she had to use a chamber pot to relieve herself and never had the luxury of washing her hands because the staff was too busy to help her. Showers happened just once a week when she was hosed down in her wheelchair, and the food was hard to stomach, she said. Morgan remembers being served a cup of orange juice laced with a thickening agent as a precaution against choking. ‘It was a miracle to get to come home,’ Morgan says. ‘It was an answer to a prayer.’ Morgan says her savior was a state Medicaid-funded program that pays for low-income patients to receive a caretaker at home for a set number of hours instead of living at a skilled-nursing facility…”