eSignature Nursing Home Enquiry Made Easy

E signature nursing home enquiry

as a follow-up to my video all about my experience in applying for the VA st. attendant program from my dad I decided to make this one to give you a step-by-step guide on how to apply yourself this is going to make it so easy for you I can't wait hi there I'm Sophia welcome to another video if this is your first time here and you'd like to be a more successful more satisfied and more informed family caregiver but go ahead and start now by hitting the subscribe button so just a couple of months ago my 93 year old dad was approved for the VA Zaidan attendant program but that process was so long and so frustrating honestly it was so stressful I wish there was some guidance for me at the time it would have made things so much easier I didn't know what forms to fill out there are so many forms and it is so complicated so I decided to make this video to help you with a step-by-step process to help you get through the process faster with way less stress I really hope that it's going to help you I really think it's going to help you a lot and do it all by yourself there's a lot of information so let's get started and I'm going to try something new because this video is going to be so jump act with information and links to forms that I don't want to keep saying there's a link in the description so instead I'm gonna use this sound so whenever I'm talking about something and you hear this sound that means there's a link to that item in the description box at the end of the video you can go to the description and print print print to your heart's desire and you're gonna be way ahead of me when I was just starting this process so just a quick overview the aid and attendant benefit is a tax-free benefit that's available to eligible veterans to help them pay for long-term care that long-term care can be in a nursing home and assisted living in adult day care or even at home and there's a couple of misconceptions about the Aden attendant program that I just wanted to clear up right at the beginning the first one is that the veteran needs to be disabled because of a wartime injury and that is not true there are separate VA benefits just for that the second misconception stems from from the VA really because the Aden attendant program is considered a pension a lot of people think that the veteran had to have retired from the military which isn't so and the third thing I wanted to clear up is that the veteran doesn't necessarily have to have been in active combat in the military they only needed to have been enlisted so the general criteria is that the veteran must meet at least one of these things one they must require assistance with activities of daily living such as bathing toileting eating ambulating etc - they are bed bound or primarily in the bed most of the day because of an illness or injury three that they reside in a nursing home facility because of their mental or physical disabilities or that they have very limited eyesight with vision that's 5 200 in both eyes or they have a 5% radius of vision meaning pinpoint vision and the veteran must have served during an eligible time of war the following is taken right from the VA website the times of war are during the World War two the Korean Conflict Vietnam era or the Persian Gulf War the Aden attention program is a needs-based pension the new rules that came out at the end of 2018 are a little complicated but what I could figure out is that they are now using a veteran's net worth to determine eligibility for net worth the primary place of residence is not counted as long as it is on a lot that's under 2 acres also one car and personal belongings and furnishings are also not counted and net worth is capped off at optimally 125,000 dollars and any medical expenses that you're able to claim are going to reduce your net worth which is going to increase your payments and they have a new three-year look-back period for asset transfers okay so before you start the application process there is quite a lot of personal information that you need to gather and get ready before you start this is going to make the process so much easier for you the first thing that you're going to need I'm going to start with this one first because if you don't have it it's going to take the longest to get and that is the military discharge papers or the dd-214 form this is the official military document that shows the service that the veteran was in the dates of entry and discharge and the status of the discharge it is required that you have anything other than a dishonorable discharge if you don't have a copy of the dd-214 then normally you can access that and request a copy online however when I went on that site right before videoing this it does state that that service is unavailable indefinitely but I'll go ahead and leave the link in the description because at some point it might become available so as an alternative you're going to need to complete this form called request pertaining to military records and mail it to the National personnel records Center and you'll find that address where to mail it right on the form once you have the dd-214 or while you're waiting for it you can gather all of the following personal information about the veteran first social security number proof of everything financial all of the bills the assets the bank account seven accounts retirement accounts all of the debts that are owed everything regarding finances make a copy of the statements and you're essentially trying to accumulate proof of the situation you're going to need proof of all sources of income including Social Security you can get a Social Security award letter right on the Social Security website you just have to register for an for a login you're also going to want proof of retirement pensions interest income investment income all sources of income it's also really important to gather information on all medical expenses for the veteran the VA might be able to pay you a higher benefit amount if you can identify expenses that they're going to deduct from your income some of these qualifying medical expenses are things like hospital co-payments or hospital stays nursing home stays co-payments for your medications or medications that were covered your health insurance premiums cost of vision care or glasses dental care or dentures also hearing aids and equipment that your parent might need you can also if you keep track of transportation that is required to go to and from hospitals or to and from doctor's appointments keep track of all that and that is also deductible I went through and pulled out one year's worth of the old chicken account and card statements and just went through and marked everything that was related to my dad there are so many things I found that I wouldn't have remembered and it was really helpful you're also going to need all the information about spouses their full name their date of birth the place and date of marriage and the place and date of divorce or death of the spouse and you're also going to need the veterans bank bank routing information because all Awards are going to be directly deposited next are all the forms you're going to need and there's a lot of them if you think you're going to need extra time to accumulate all the information that I suggest you gather as well as fill out all the forms that I have even yet to talk about then I recommend you fill out this form called intent to file a claim for compensation and/or pension or survivors pension and/or di C when you mail this form in the date that the VA receives it will become the start date of your benefit since they will pay your rectory retroactive to this date and you have a whole year to actually complete your application or claim this is really great to insure that you'll have a start date as far back in time as possible and as you as you can see it's really a quick and short form next if you're going to be helping your parent with this application process then you're going to want them to sign an authorization to disclose information to a third party that is if they're still competent to sign the VA does not acknowledge a power of attorney but they will acknowledge a court approved conservatorship or guardianship so with your application packet you should also send in copies of those documents don't forget to fill out the security question on the second page if you ever need to call the VA they're going to ask you this question for security purposes and on the right on the form will be the address where to mail it or you can just submit it with your initial application if the veteran is unable to manage their own finances then you might want to consider applying to become the official fiduciary which is a legally assigned person to manage the money be aware that there are very strict rules about the responsibility of a fiduciary finally the primary form to fill out for the Aden attendant program is called application for veterans pension there are four pages and a lot of information that I told you together earlier is going to help you fill this form out there are two additional forms attached one is the worksheet for assisted living daycare or similar facility which should be filled out if the veteran lives in an assisted living facility a residential care facility or attends daycare and a representative from that facility or an agency is going to need to certify and sign the form there's also a page to be completed if the veteran receives care from an in-home attendant if you're going to be applying for Aden attendants online like I did then this is the form that if you complete it fully ahead of time this form is the only information that they ask you for the online application so if you have it done on paper it will make it really easy to do the online application if the veteran resides in a nursing home then you're going to need to fill out a separate form called request for nursing home information in conjunction with claim for Aid and Attendance another required form is the examination for housebound status or permanent need for regular Aid and Attendance this is the form that the doctor needs to fill out okay are you tired yet that was a lot of forms so what do you do with them now well there are three ways that you can start your application process now that you have everything gather the first way is to put a packet together with all the information you accumulated and all the forms filled out and send them to the pension management center in your area if you want to do this I would recommend that you send everything by certified mail the second way is to apply at the VA is a regional office near you but the easiest and fastest way to apply is right online at the VA gov website which is what I did let me show you around there a little so we're gonna start on the top left hand corner under VA benefits and health care and scroll down to pension and then at the bottom choose apply now for veteran's pension this is where they're going to want you to log in if you don't already have an online account with the VA you're gonna need to make one and use it to sign in if you start your application without signing in you're not going to be able to save it but if you sign in you can complete this process a little bits at a time as you gather information if you filled out the paper version of the application for veterans pension then this online process will only take you about 10 or 15 minutes they are only going to ask you for the information from that one form and then you take all of the other information that you've accumulated and you make a packet and send to them hopefully you have access to a scanner because you're going to want to scan all of the documents that you've gathered all your evidence and all of the forms that you've filled out scan them into your computer and at the end of the application process online they're going to allow you to upload all of that documentation as proof to support your application before you submit the application online you will be asked if you want to submit a fully developed claim and what that means is that you're saying that 100% of all of the documentation and evidence that you could get is available right now with the initial application and you're saying yes I want you to review all of this evidence and the VA is going to be able to make a quick decision based on all the information you submitted and if you gathered all the information that I recommended you should have everything you need however if there is some document that's missing or they want more information from you they'll let you know by mail in that case they wouldn't be able to say and affinity of yes or no your fully developed claim would just transition over to a regular application so there's really not anything to lose by submitting a fully developed claim but by doing so you're going to be able to hopefully get an answer much quicker but if you think that you're going to have more information to submit later later then say no if you're going the online route you will have 60 days to complete your online application however if you do what i recommend it get everything ready ahead of time and submit everything in the beginning that's going to take you twenty minutes it is not going to take you 60 days and like i said if they need more information they will contact you by mail tell you exactly what it is they need they'll give you the forms to fill out that they want you to fill out just make sure that you turn turn those in and get them back to them in a very timely manner i have heard that the fully developed claim will take about two to three months whereas if you do everything by mail it'll take a lot longer and it took me and my dad's process quite a bit longer if you want to watch that crazy process go ahead and watch this video here but it was crazy and long and stressful because i didn't have a video like this to help me i was completely on my own and that can be dangerous so i really hope that this is going to help you if you have questions about filling out any of the VA forms you can call the VA directly at eight hundred eight to seven one thousand i when i was going through the process they were a couple of questions on there that i had no idea what they were what they were asking me for so I did call this number they picked up really quickly they were very helpful and friendly and I recommend you use that number or if you need help with forms you can also contact your local veteran's service organization so this process does not have to be a horrible as you heard I hope this video made it a lot less intimidating and less stressful you can do this all by yourself one form at a time leave me a comment if you decide to go for it and let me know how it goes I hope you found this information helpful today and if you did please hit the like button and if you don't want to miss any new videos on everything senior then go ahead and subscribe and hit the notification bell I release videos every Tuesday and I hope you're not going to want to miss out thanks so much for watching today I'll see you next time