Why do nursing homes want 5 years of bank statements?

NH is trying to determine if your mom can be eligible for LTC Medicaid or if she is going to be a private pay resident.

For LTC Medicaid a 5 yr review of all her financials is pretty standard to provide to the state via the NH to use to determine that she is now impoverished (usually at 2k max in non exempt assets) and that her income is at or below whatever amount your state has set for maximum income for n individual LTC Medicaid applicate. Often a NH tightly reviews the bank statements to determine IF they will accept your mom as a “Medicaid Pending” resident or if she needs to come in at full private pay rate if they notice her impoverishment seems to have large transfers that don’t seem right & may mean gifting issues.

In addition both NH & state will want her 2019 “awards letters”; these are the documents she would have gotten from SSA, & any other retirements or pensions that she gets paid as income either monthly or on a regular basis. The awards letters get sent out like in Nov, 2018 and state to the penny what she will be paid as income starting January, 2019 and what is being deducted from that income. Like MediCARE is deducted from her SS. The income shown on the awards letters are what the NH will require her to have as her monthly copay or SOC (share of cost) less whatever your state has as its PNA (personal needs allowance). Like for TX, the PNA is $60. So if she gets paid $1200 SS a mo and then $500 a mo from late hubs pension, that’s $1700 income. NH should get $1640 copay each month under Medicaid rules for eligibility and she keeps the extra $60. But that’s it for $ for her once she’s Medicaid Pending or on Medicaid.

The NH needs to know how they will be paid.

If her bank statements don't show that she can afford their care, they will expect to be paid by Medicaid.

If she will be needing Medicaid assistance, she will have to show that she has not been giving money away during the last 5 years in order to avoid paying for her own care.

If your mom has substantial net worth, you need to see an Elder Law attorney to arrange her affairs and to make the Medicaid application if it's ever needed. This may seem like one more onerous job, but it will make life way more pleasant for you in the long term. The attorney will be way more helpful in the process than the NH would be.

You might want to consider hiring a geriatric care manager to do all this for her. Unfortunately, it's not inexpensive to grow old and demented. Planning ahead and selection of a good care facility in advance of immediate need makes it better. And, fortunately, Medicaid is available to pay for care if it's needed.

Oh yes! If Medicaid is in her future, the application process is quite time consuming I found. It helped me to read the application (NY) on line in advance and try to stay very organized. The result of getting her placed into a good facility will be your reward however, so you can look forward to that. It took me hours of research to get the info needed to complete the Medicaid application, so it’s not just you they’re picking on. They want to make sure that there was no large gifting or trying to hide money, so they look back 5 years for any large withdrawals that might be suspicious. If you can’t find hard copies of her monthly statements, you can probably get a few past years on line. If the online records don’t go back far enough, the bank can send you the missing months for a few bucks. You will also need copies of her SS and pensions statements, and any insurance policy. If you go online there probably is a NJ Medicaid application you can read over that will give you a heads up to other questions and info you will need to provide. This is just another little bump in the path to some better “me time”. You can do it!

They need to see that mom can either self pay for a few years or its the Medicaid 5 year look back.if they’ll be applying for medicaid for your Mom there is a 5 year look back.

They all do, they want to see how much money she has and how it was spent....just went through this...ask away...I have the answers