Nursing woes

Maggie has nurses in the house 16 hours a day to do all the skilled care Maggie needs. This has been a wonderful service and has enabled us to keep Maggie at home with her family instead of living in some sort of institution. The state pays for the nurses through medi-cal the state insurance plan/fund. It is better for Maggie, better for us and cheaper for the state to do it this way so everyone wins. Now, after many many years of this we have been unceremoniously dropped by her nursing agency. The rate paid by the state is so low, the nursing agency is losing money by providing the care. (There are additional issues about this agency but we'll just stick with the straight business line.)

We are scrambling now because this is something we cannot do on our own. The Regional Center will provide the funding but I will have to find, hire and fire the nurses on my own and keep the paperwork as though I am the agency. In addition we will have to pay the nurses for the first month of nursing out of pocket and then get reimbursed from the Regional Center. that's a LOT of money. Basically I have to take on another 30-40 hours of week of paperwork and administration to get this in place. It seems, however, that we are choiceless. I am hopeful that once we are established, the workload will go down and just spike at certain points each month. It is overwhelming. Hopefully we will get this set up in the next week or so. Keep a good thought.