Expert Home Care NJ - New Jersey Home Health

New Jersey’s Expert Home Care for Elders and Seniors provides care for your aging loved ones since 1984. Please call us when your loved one needs help - 800-848-2336.

Medicare Fraud in New Jersey

Medicare Fraud was a growing problem back in the 1990’s. Exposing those who participate in Medicare fraud in New Jersey was essential to helping to control the problem. In 1990, the Florida Legislature passed a law with an amendment that allowed anyone with a medical degree from outside the United States, who was not licensed as a physician, to become certified as a physician assistant in Florida.

There were 960 foreign medical graduates (FMGs) who took advantage of this opportunity before the Florida Academy of Physician Assistants got an injunction and stopped this major mistake.

In 1994 the Legislature passed a law that would require those FMGs to pass an examination administered by the state similar to the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants examination required to become a nationally certified physician assistant.

Of the 900 or so who took that exam, 60 passed. The remaining lost their privilege to practice medicine in Florida. Of those remaining 60, 15 have been convicted of Medicare fraud, and several more have been convicted of other major medical offenses. They have since lost their privileges. The physician’s assistant in the story was one of the foreign medical graduates and never nationally certified.

Medicare Fraud read story

Expert Home Care of New Jersey offers free van service for our caregivers directly to our client’s doors in the counties of Bergen, Morris, Hunterdon, Warren, Sussex, Essex, Middlesex, Mercer, Monmouth, Ocean, Somerset, Passaic, Union and Hudson.

Call us when your elder loved one, living in New Jersey, needs home care and live-in care at               800-848-2336

Yesterday our post gave you information on how sleep affects senior’s health. Is it better to get many hours of sleep or better to get sound sleep, less hours, but high quality? Remember a senior suffers when sleep is poor - it adversely effects the elder’s immune system, leaving the individual vulnerable to infection and illness.

Are you looking to get a better night’s sleep? Here are some things to consider:

• Stick to a sleep schedule – go to bed and get up at the same time every day, even on weekends
• Don’t exercise at least five or six hours before going to bed
• Avoid caffeine and nicotine. This includes coffee, tea, cola and chocolate
• Stay away from alcohol before bedtime
• Don’t eat large meals late at night
• Avoid medicines that delay or interrupt your sleep, if at all possible. This includes some heart, blood pressure, asthma, cough, cold and allergy medications
• Don’t nap after 3 p.m
• Relax before going to bed
• Take a hot bath at night
• Have a good sleeping environment – keep the room cool and dark, turn off the TV
• Try to get outside in natural sunlight for at least 30 minutes each day
• Don’t lie in bed awake. If you can’t fall asleep after 20 minutes, get up and do something relaxing like reading
• See a sleep specialist if you continue to have difficulty sleeping

 If your aging relative needs senior home care or live-in care please contact Expert Home Care in New Jersey at 800-848-2336.

New Jersey residents are digging deeper into their pockets for nursing home and assisted living care compared with people in other parts of the country. A Genworth Financial 2008 Cost of Care Survey lists the annual cost of a years stay in a private nursing home in the 12 northernmost counties of NJ as $105,799 vs. the national average of $76,640.

Genworth surveyed more than 10,000 facilities across the country including providers in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Alaska was found to have the highest annual cost for a nursing home at $187,902 while Louisiana had the lowest at $45,539. For assisted living NJ residents paid more than $50,000 on average for a 1 year stay in private one-bedroom unit compared to the $36,900 national average.

Home care in NJ turned out to be the only area in the survey where costs were pretty much on par with the rest of the country. The average cost of hourly care in NJ was $19.33 compared to the national average of $19.18. On an annual basis this cost equates to $44,227 in NJ compared to $43,884 for the national average.

An AARP study said that its members are increasingly saying they would prefer to remain their own homes which was described as a cheaper alternative to institutionalized nursing care.

It certainly pays to do your homework and figure out all the costs involved when it comes to providing care for a loved one.  It helps to know all the options when making this very important decision.  In closing Home Care is certainly a very viable option worth considering. At Expert Home Care we can provide hourly and live in care assistance in the home.