Nursing home and aging-parent care books for families
Understand the system. Protect your family. Avoid costly surprises.
Two plain-English guides to skilled nursing facility admission, Medicare and Medicaid coverage, and the nursing home bill, plus three fill-in workbooks for the decisions that come with caring for an aging parent. Written by Raymond Ali, a skilled nursing facility Business Office Manager with 15+ years behind the billing desk.
QUICK GUIDE
Which book is right for your family?
Start with the problem in front of you. The two guides explain how nursing home care, coverage and billing really work. The three workbooks help you organize the day-to-day decisions of caring for an aging parent.
| If you need to… | Choose | Best time to start |
|---|---|---|
| Choose and compare a facility, get through admission, and understand Medicare coverage, billing, appeals and discharge | The Skilled Nursing Facility Survival Guide | When a hospital stay may lead to a skilled nursing facility |
| Understand how the nursing home bill, private pay, Medicare Advantage and Medicaid actually work | Behind the Nursing Home Bill | Before long-term care or a Medicaid application |
| Keep medications, insurance, legal documents and emergency contacts in one place | Aging Parent Emergency Information Binder | Now, before a crisis |
| Compare and hire a home care agency with the right questions and a pricing worksheet | Home Care Agency Hiring & Interview Checklist | Before you call the first agency |
| Track daily dementia care and share it across family members and caregivers | Dementia Caregiver Daily Planner & Safety Checklist | As soon as more than one person is helping |
THE COLLECTION
All five books
The two guides are 6 × 9 inch paperbacks. The three workbooks are 8.5 × 11 inch fill-in paperbacks. All five are on Amazon, and the two guides are also at Barnes & Noble.
ADMISSION • MEDICARE • BILLING • DISCHARGE
The Skilled Nursing Facility Survival Guide
How to make smart decisions, avoid costly mistakes, and become your loved one’s best advocate.
Best for families facing a hospital-to-nursing-facility move who want to know what to ask, what to sign and what to watch for.
What you’ll learn
- What to ask before you sign the skilled nursing facility admission agreement
- How to evaluate and compare facilities beyond the lobby, using Medicare Care Compare
- How Original Medicare and Medicare Advantage cover — and stop covering — SNF care
- What private pay, long-term-care insurance and coordination of benefits mean for your bill
- How to read a nursing home statement line by line and know what to question
- What to do when a bill is wrong, coverage is denied or an appeal is needed
- How to plan for discharge and the first 72 hours home
- 15 “Costly Mistakes” real families make, and how to avoid every one of them
MEDICARE • MEDICAID • PRIVATE PAY • LONG-TERM CARE
Behind the Nursing Home Bill
Not just a bill. A system. A billing insider’s guide to the financial reality of long-term care.
Best for families who want to understand what nursing home care costs, who pays and how Medicaid really works before the bills arrive.
What you’ll learn
- Why Medicare doesn’t pay for long-term nursing home care, and exactly what it does cover
- How Medicare Advantage prior authorization, continued-stay reviews and denials work
- What “private pay” really means and how a nursing home’s daily rate is built
- How Medicaid eligibility, the five-year lookback and penalty periods actually work
- The financial red flags — forgotten accounts, gifts, joint accounts — that can stall an application
- What happens to the house, the community spouse, trusts and the estate
- When to bring in an elder-law attorney, and what to ask in that first meeting
- The 30 questions every family should ask, from admission through Medicaid approval
Workbooks for aging-parent care
Fill-in companions from the Family Care Preparedness Series for the decisions that come up next.
MEDICATIONS • INSURANCE • LEGAL • CONTACTS
Aging Parent Emergency Information Binder
Everything your family needs to know before a crisis happens.
Best for adult children, spouses and caregivers who want every critical detail findable in minutes.
- Doctors, medications and allergies
- Medicare and insurance information
- Powers of attorney and advance directives
- Emergency contacts and document locations
INTERVIEWS • PRICING • AGREEMENTS
Home Care Agency Hiring & Interview Checklist
Compare services. Ask better questions. Plan reliable care.
Best for families comparing home care agencies and caregivers before signing anything.
- Agency and caregiver interview questions
- Reference checks and screening
- Pricing worksheets and weekly schedules
- Service-agreement review and first-day planning
ROUTINES • SAFETY • HANDOFFS
Dementia Caregiver Daily Planner & Safety Checklist
Support familiar routines. Notice changes. Share care.
Best for families sharing dementia care across siblings, shifts or paid caregivers.
- Seven undated daily spreads
- Medication, meal, hydration and sleep tracking
- Behavior-change notes
- Wandering and fall safety checklists, plus caregiver handoffs
WRITTEN FROM THE BUSINESS OFFICE
Why families use these books
✓
Inside knowledge
Written by someone who has handled billing, insurance verification and Medicaid from the facility side of the desk.
✓
Plain English
Medicare, Medicaid and billing terms are explained the way you would explain them to your own family.
✓
Made to share
Worksheets and handoff pages help siblings, spouses and caregivers work from the same information.
✓
Ready for the meeting
Bring them to admission, care-plan meetings and agency interviews with your questions already written down.
QUESTIONS
Frequently asked questions
Which book should I read first?
If a loved one may be moving from the hospital to a skilled nursing facility, start with The Skilled Nursing Facility Survival Guide. It walks through choosing a facility, admission, coverage, billing, appeals and discharge. If your main worry is paying for long-term care or applying for Medicaid, start with Behind the Nursing Home Bill. Many families read both.
How do I compare nursing homes?
Start with Medicare’s Care Compare website, which shows star ratings for health inspections, staffing and quality measures, along with the inspection reports themselves. Then visit at different times of day and ask about staff turnover and how care-plan meetings work. The Skilled Nursing Facility Survival Guide explains how to read those ratings and what to ask on a tour.
What should be in an aging parent emergency binder?
Emergency contacts, doctors, a current medication and allergy list, Medicare and insurance information, copies or locations of powers of attorney and advance directives, and where other important documents are kept. The Aging Parent Emergency Information Binder gives you a page for each.
What should I ask a home care agency before hiring?
Ask how caregivers are screened and trained, who supervises them, what happens when a caregiver calls out, how rates and minimum hours work, and what the service agreement says about changes and cancellation. The Home Care Agency Hiring & Interview Checklist organizes these questions with pricing worksheets and space to compare agencies side by side.
How can our family keep dementia care consistent across caregivers?
Use one shared daily record for medications, meals, fluids, sleep and behavior changes, and review safety checklists for wandering and falls. The Dementia Caregiver Daily Planner & Safety Checklist gives you seven undated daily spreads and handoff pages so nothing gets lost between caregivers.
Where can I buy the books?
All five books are available in paperback on Amazon. The Skilled Nursing Facility Survival Guide and Behind the Nursing Home Bill are also available at Barnes & Noble.
Do these books replace legal, financial or medical advice?
No. They are educational guides and organizational workbooks. Medicare and Medicaid rules change, and Medicaid rules vary by state, so confirm your situation with Medicare, your state Medicaid agency, an elder-law attorney or your loved one’s care team.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Raymond Ali
Raymond Ali has spent more than fifteen years working inside skilled nursing facilities and nursing homes as a Medical Biller and Business Office Manager, across multiple facilities in New York and North Carolina. Over that time, he’s sat across the desk from thousands of families navigating Medicare, Medicare Advantage, private pay and Medicaid — often on the hardest day of their lives — and watched the same confusion and the same avoidable financial surprises happen again and again, simply because no one had ever explained the system in plain language.
He founded SNF Billing Book LLC to change that, writing Behind the Nursing Home Bill and The Skilled Nursing Facility Survival Guide directly from the business-office side of the desk to give families — and fellow professionals — the kind of clear, practical understanding of nursing home billing and long-term care financing that usually only comes from years on the job.
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