THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, August 10, 1995 TAG: 9508100517
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DEBRA GORDON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines
A semiprivate room in a Hampton Roads nursing home costs more than one in southwest or central Virginia, but less than one in northwest and Northern Virginia.
Details of room charges are contained in ``The Consumer Guide to Nursing Home Charges,'' a new publication from the Virginia Health Services Cost Review Council. The guide provides cost and service information about every nursing home in the state.
The guide also gives consumers a checklist of questions to ask when choosing a nursing home, describes alternatives to nursing homes and explains how to obtain copies of state inspection reports on nursing homes.
``It is important to ask questions, but often difficult to know what questions to ask,'' said Ann McGee, the cost review council's executive director.
Statewide, the average cost of a semiprivate room in a nursing home as of February was $87. For the Eastern Virginia region, the rate was $90.
In Hampton Roads, the for-profit James Pointe Care Center in Newport News charged the highest rate for a semi-private room: $125. That charge doesn't include physical, occupational and speech therapies, for which James Pointe charges $33 to $66 per 15-minute session.
In comparison, an earlier report by the Cost Review Council found that the nursing home's average expense per patient day in 1993 was $77.43.
The not-for-profit Beth Shalom Home of Eastern Virginia in Virginia Beach came in second in the new guide. There, a semi-private room costs the same as a private room: $112 per day. The nursing home's average expense per day in 1993 was $92.74.
While the cost information may be helpful to some consumers, most nursing home residents don't pay the quoted daily rate - the state does. More than 60 percent of those in Virginia's nursing homes receive Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for the poor, which reimburses nursing homes an average of $65 a day for a semi-private room. ILLUSTRATION: TO GET THE GUIDE
The Consumer Guide to Nursing Home Charges is available in all
Area Agencies on Aging. For Hampton Roads, call the Southeastern
Virginia Area-Wide Model Program, SEVAMP, at 461-9481.
It is also available at local social services and health
departments and hospital discharge offices.
Copies may also be obtained by calling the Virginia Health
Services Cost Review Council at 804-786-6371.
KEYWORDS: NURSING HOMES VIRGINIA by CNB