Nursing Homes Under the Microscope

As we age in life, thoughts oftentimes turn to just who will take care of us when that day comes when we can’t fend for ourselves.

Even those in society with many relatives are not guaranteed that they one day won’t be residing in a nursing home. The thought of being in a strange environment, having to worry about where the money will come from to finance this residency, etc. can be a very scary thing.

Now let me say that there are many fine nursing homes out there with very caring employees and upper management, who have the best interests of their patients at heart. On the flip side, there are some administrators that are in it strictly for the dollar and probably wouldn’t lose a night’s sleep if your grandmother or your former neighbor didn’t get the best care they needed.

Well, I guarantee you more nursing homes are sleeping a little less these days.

With trial lawyers looking to swoop in at a moment’s notice, more homes are making sure the house is in order when they do business.

Thanks to recent Joint Select Committee panel hearings on nursing homes in Florida, we found another topic to discuss in our new publication. Thanks to some readers who alerted me to different angles on this topic, we explore some of the issues facing nursing homes in Florida and where it all might be headed.

A brief report (page 8) on the panel hearings and thoughts from the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCI), a Q&A (page 8) with Sandy Elsass, president of Uni-Ter Underwriting Management Corp., a subsidiary of New York-based U.S. RE Cos., and a response (page 33) from Barbara Hengstebeck, president of Coalition to Protect America’s Elders, to a release we ran last month on our Web site, cover this explosive topic.

Elsass told me that nursing home insurance is problematic in Alabama and Mississippi and other parts of this region of the country. That’s where you the reader come in.

Drop us a note and let us know what is going on in your state. We want to be your number one source for news for independent agents and the industry in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia. If it’s not nursing homes, let us know what is impacting the industry in your neck of the woods.

We hope you like your Insurance Journal Southeast issue, and we’ll talk to you soon.