October 13. Foiled Again

Well, Harold wasn't discharged.

First--his health is fine, no changes. Tired, really hurting, and fed up, but not worse.
As for the rest:

1) the Fairmont bed didn't come through (the person vacating wasn't well enough to leave)

2) By afternoon the Highland team had changed placement options. Dr. Hassan believes he has improved, if slowly. He is now no longer sick enough to be eligible for a skilled nursing facility (Medi-Cal requirements) . Personally I think it's funny that they decide that the very day they lose his bed at Fairmont. We may try for this anyway if we decide it should be done.  

The new option recommended is a board and care. Some of you  will know that this is fairly expensive, and Medi-Cal doesn't pay for this (despite the fact that B&C's are cheaper than SNF's. Ironically Oregon MediCaid does pay for these last time I checked.

3) UCSF needs his records before they can consider him for placement/treatment. But despite what had been communicated, we can't get his records to UCSF any time soon. It's back to what we previously thought, per HIPAA/Cali law, etc.: Complete records only at Harold's discharge, and they have up to 14 days to get them to us, or to wherever we ask them to send them.There is now an order placed for them to start getting records together for  UCSF as soon as he's discharged.

So, Tomorrow his medical team is meeting with him as the last meeting before discharge. Renal, Oncology, MD and I think Social Worker. Rosemary and Sierra will be there with a sheaf of thoughts and questions for the team. But especially to make it clear that Harold won't be released when he has no where to go and no income or savings. AND THAT THIS BEING THE CASE A WAY MUST BE FOUND TO START HIS CHEMO. Also will see if his level of home care needed is doable enough that Harold could come home. BTW, sometimes Medi-Cal will pay for home care visits, we'll check. As you can imagine there are many other details and applications and monkey business, some of which is hopeful (e.g. Getting him applied for Medicare which will really open up his options.) which I'm not going to clutter this blog with, to end a sentence with a preposition.

Again, lots of people doing lots of work today, and more tomorrow.

Send good thoughts,
Jackie