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Mom's been there almost a year now and SS office says this should be routine for NH. She is on medicaid and I pay her pension from her checking account the balance is the SS payment. Has anyone else had this experience? It is like they have no clue as to what steps to take. I get a bill which they call a statement, every month balance due is SS payment. I have made many efforts to resolve this but I get nowhere.

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To fill you in and also this is a good way to record the events taking place. Today I finally get a call from the Assistant administrator at NH. She finally had a meeting with the woman in charge of billing. I don't believe the delay of yet another month to have this meeting was the Ass Adm. fault. She explains to me that the year that has past is normal, according to billing dept., and I will still be receiving statements with a balance due for SS payments owed and other residents have had same issue for same lenghth of time. I informed her that SS office said to me quite a while ago this is not normal time period and NH should know this. Then she told me that billing dept. said that when she was released from inpatient to NH. Someone at billing dept. at hospital released her as deceased. I explained to her that if that was the case why did the SS office tell me that they are waiting to hear from the facility she is residing at currently. They never questioned her as if she'd been deceased. Someone is screwing up somewhere. So my next step is getting facts from hospital and SS office. AARRGGHHH!!!!
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Thanx Igloo you for a very detailed answer. I left out a major detail, her checks were originally set up by Mom for direct deposit and was never a problem. Then she was in limbo (so to speak) in an inpatient mental health hospital. Sometime during her stay there, the hospital set up to recieve her SS income direct deposit, in which I wasn't notifyed and happened quite fast too, but still no problem since she was being cared for by them and during that time I applied for medicaid, so it actually made everything easier since I didn't need to deal with that among other issues with the bill or spend down that money. After medicaid approval she was dismissed from hospital as inpatient and became a resident at NH. Her payments to Hospital were stopped by hospital billing as required and I checked that out to make sure, all good there. The NH asked for me to write a letter giving OK, as her agent to DD to them. I did that, infact the admmisions director wrote the letter herself, I then I signed it. Thought It was all being taken care of. Well then I get a bill certified mail for full amount of NH costs, as if they were not aware of her medicaid status or the letter about DD (not a clue). I called the admmisions director she told me it was my job to talk to billing. I tried endless times in person as well as calls and left letters in thier personal mail in office, months went by no response the rest I already posted above..... Since my meeting with the Administrator, about 1 month now. I called and she said she didn't forget shes setting up meeting. Saw her today she said she didn't forget. So now just waiting. I just can't rest I don't like loose ends especially when It comes to the Medicaid stuff. I have had it with phone calls and paper work and I am so afraid I'm the one that is going to have to straighten out a bigger mess in the future. I'll keep you posted!
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Where is the monthly SS going now?

In order to set up a SS direct deposit you need:
1. an on-line account at SS. This is easy and you can do it in just a few minutes.
2. Once you have that you acting as your mom's DPOA can have her SS made a direct deposit into any bank account.
3. Now you need to decide what banking system works best - it can either go into mom's bank account and then you send the NH a cancelled check for that exact amount for them to do a monthly automatic debit. (Although this sounds good, it is a PIA as the amount can change annually and you might have to do a new check for every year); OR you can have the monthly SS go into the NH bank account. You will need their bank routing number to do that and you do it through your mom's SS on-line portal. It takes about 30 days to get done. So if she get's paid on the 2nd then you do it on the 4th so that it is as close to the next payment window; OR you pay them each month a check in the exact amount as her SS.

Most NH don't give out their account/bank route info. If you want to do it this way
then you and someone from billing will need to sit and go-line together to have the direct deposit changed to the NH. SS will give you a confirmation when you complete the on-line process and the NH should get the payment within 3 - 6 weeks from when it was done.

SS & you are right in that NH do this all the time and it should be very routine.

My suggestion is to send another letter to billing and CC it via certified letter return registered mail to both the administrator for the NH and to the owner of the NH. Owner info will be state NH site - if not the owner then whomever is the chair of the board of directors of the NH.

Sending RRM is very important in that it establishes they received it. This is done thru the USPO and runs about $ 5 - 8.00.

In the letter detail what has happened over the past year with specific payment history (check # 123 mailed 1/3/10 deposited 1/28/10) and when you had conversations on this and then say you need to have this issue resolved within the next 30 days - tell them how happy/content/well cared for you mother is as their NH BUT your mother gets concerned/agitated/depressed, etc. whenever you tell her there is still a problem with accurate crediting of HER social security money by the facility and you are concerned about how this affects her mental health.

We had a real issue with my mom's LTC billing. For 3 cycles the amount "due"
was incorrect and didn't correspond to her assets and the checks were taking 4 -6 weeks to clear and we were getting late notices. The financial gal was totally inept and she is now gone as we were not the only ones. However I was told it was the RRM sent to the chair of the board of directors that got her investigated and asked to resign. When she left they found a stack of checks from the prior month that hadn't been deposited. Good luck!
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Thank for your answer Carol. I will check it out. In more detail I have absolutely no issues with the care Mom is getting her quality of life is as best as it can be but I try to stay ontop of her basic needs. My Mom is only 73 and her condition is mostly mental so staff is very good and patient with her behavior. The billing department on the other hand is an entirely different issue. To sum it up I got letters as if she wasn't on medicaid like she owed entire bill. I called I left messages no response , they were never available when I was there in person , this went on for about three months. Then I get a call that I have to reslove this issue as if I never tryed and was in not so many words accused of having a direct deposit to me. Then I was told it wasn't thier job to set it up when I was told by SS that the NH should do this as routine. After I finally thought they were handling it,I was told it will take months which SS told me it doesn't and almost a year and SS never heard from them. So I finally went to talk to the Administration and shes even having problems with getting her to sit down and deal with this. I am just wondering if they want to get paid and why this woman still has a job. So you can see why this is frustrating. I really don't want to make waves but I know somehow I am the one going to have to take time with medicaidin the future if it gets deeper. I sent a letter along with her annual renewal application explaining the situation.
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You may want to try the ombudsman for your area. You can find this person on your state website or at www.ltcombudsman.org. They may not be able to directly help you, but they have a lot of information at their disposal to help you get to the right person. SS should be able to figure this out, but once there's a glitch it can take forever. Good luck,
Carol
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