Where to start
If you have just become responsible for an older person's care — maybe overnight, maybe after a phone call from a hospital, maybe the care is your own — your world may be spinning. You are not the first person to stand here. Almost everyone arrives without the words for what they are feeling or what they need to ask. This page is a map. It will not decide anything for you. It will help you understand your choices. It will also show you who to ask when only your state or a local office has the answer.
First, which of these is you?
This is urgent. A hospital discharge is coming, or there has been a sudden turn for the worse, and you have only days. Start with the people whose job is to help. Talk to the hospital's discharge planner or case manager today. Then call your Area Agency on Aging through the Eldercare Locator at 1-800-677-1116. The line is open Monday to Friday, 8am to 9pm Eastern.[2]
Know this before you talk to them, because most families don't. If someone on Medicare is in the hospital, and the hospital wants to send them home before you think they are ready, you can ask for a fast appeal. The hospital must give the patient a notice called "An Important Message from Medicare about Your Rights." They must give it within two days of admission and again before discharge. Follow the steps on that notice no later than the day the discharge is scheduled. An outside reviewer then decides if the covered care should continue. (The reviewer is called a Beneficiary and Family Centered Care Quality Improvement Organization.) If you ask in time, the person can stay in the hospital while the decision is made. They do not pay for the extra days, other than any coinsurance or deductible that already applies.[1] The deadline is everything. If no one has handed you the notice, ask for it.
You are planning ahead. Things are steady but changing, and you want to see the road before you are on it. This is the best time to learn. Start with Planning ahead. It covers staying independent, the legal paperwork, the money, and looking after the caregiver. Then work through the three questions below.
Almost everyone ends up answering three questions
Elder care feels like a thousand decisions. Underneath, most people are working through the same three:
- 1. What kind of help is actually needed? → Figure out the kind of care
- 2. Who pays for it, and in what order? → Who pays for care
- 3. What happens when the money runs out? → When the money runs out
Read them in order, or jump to the one keeping you up tonight.
Special situations worth checking early
- Is this a veteran, or a veteran's surviving spouse? There is a benefit many families miss → If your person is a veteran
- Are memory changes part of the picture? Dementia shifts everything else → Memory changes & dementia care
- Has your parent moved into your home, or is that the plan? The everyday frictions nobody warns you about, and what helps → When a parent moves in
- Nobody in crisis yet? Then you are early, which is the best place to be → Planning ahead: staying independent, the paperwork, the money, the caregiver
How to read anything on this site
We gather what is publicly known — the rules, the programs, the official numbers — in one place. We say where each fact came from and when we checked it. Every page with numbers ends with a list of its sources and what each one does and does not prove. If we could not open a source, we say so and take the claim off the page.
We never tell you what to do. The exact dollar limits, and questions like "will my mother qualify?", belong to other people. As much as we wish to do more, such things belong to each state's Medicaid office. They belong to your local Area Agency on Aging, an agency your state has picked to line up services for older people in your area.[3] And for money questions, they often belong to an elder-law attorney. Every page here ends the same way: with who to ask and what to ask them.
Sources and what they support
Sources checked 2026-09-23 using AI-assisted editorial research. This is a source check, not medical, legal or benefits advice.
- Medicare, fast appeals. Supports the fast appeal when a hospital plans to discharge you: the notice "An Important Message from Medicare about Your Rights" given within two days of admission and again before discharge; that the request must follow the notice's directions no later than the scheduled discharge day; that an independent Beneficiary and Family Centered Care Quality Improvement Organization reviews the medical records and the hospital's information and decides whether covered services should continue; and that asking within the time frame lets the person stay in hospital pending the decision without paying for the stay apart from applicable coinsurance or deductibles. This applies to Medicare coverage of a hospital stay. It does not guarantee the outcome of an appeal, and it is not a general right to remain in hospital for as long as a family would prefer.
- ACL, Eldercare Locator. Supports that the Locator is a public service of the Administration for Community Living connecting people to services for older adults and their families, the 1-800-677-1116 number, and the staffed hours of Monday to Friday, 8am to 9pm Eastern. A referral route: it connects you to an agency and does not itself decide eligibility or hold a place in any programme.
- ACL, Area Agencies on Aging. Supports that an Area Agency on Aging is a public or private non-profit agency designated by a state to address the needs of older persons at regional and local level, covering a planning and service area, and that its role is coordinating and offering services that help older adults remain at home. It does not promise a particular service, price or waiting time at any particular agency.
Added in this pass: the Medicare fast-appeal detail. This page previously said only that "a safe discharge is your right," which is a fair summary of hospital discharge-planning duties but is not a right a family can act on. The appeal, its notice and its deadline are.