Placement services
Skilled nursing and rehab placement in the Phoenix metro
Short-term rehab, long-term nursing care, and the transition that catches most families off guard — the end of Medicare’s hundred days.
The day-100 wall
After a qualifying hospital stay, Medicare covers skilled nursing care for up to 100 days per benefit period — fully for the first 20 days, then with a daily co-insurance. Coverage also requires that the person continues to need and benefit from skilled care.
Two things surprise families. First, coverage frequently ends well before day 100, when therapy determines the patient has plateaued. Second, when it ends, Medicare pays nothing toward long-term custodial care — not in a nursing home, not in assisted living.
The call we most often wish had come sooner arrives around day 70, when the family has just been told discharge is next week and has no plan and no ALTCS application filed. If you are anywhere near that point, call us on (307) 200-5270. An ALTCS application can take up to about 90 days.
Where we help
- Rehab-to-home-or-community transitions when therapy is ending
- Long-term nursing placement when the care need genuinely exceeds assisted living
- Step-downs from a SNF into assisted living or a licensed home
- ALTCS navigation before the Medicare days run out, not after
- Difficult discharges — behaviours, bariatric, dialysis, no funding
Nursing home or assisted living?
A skilled nursing facility provides 24-hour licensed nursing. Assisted living, at any Arizona licence level, does not — it provides care and supervision. The distinction is not about how frail someone looks; it is about whether they need a nurse on the premises around the clock.
Families frequently push for a nursing home out of anxiety when the person would live better, and considerably more cheaply, in a licensed assisted living home. Just as often, a family pushes for assisted living when the care need genuinely requires a SNF. Working through the care needs against Arizona’s licence levels is how you tell the difference, and it is the first thing we do.
For discharge planners
If you are a SNF case manager or hospital discharge planner rather than a family member, we have written a page specifically for you — including what we need in a referral and how we handle acuity matching. See the referral process.
Begin
Tell us what’s happening. We’ll tell you what’s possible.
A conversation with Stephanie Acosta costs nothing and carries no obligation, including if the answer is that you don’t need us yet.