Your rights, the two notices to find and keep, and a checklist for the first 72 hours home — the phone number in this guide is the one families wish they'd had.
Two Notices to Find and Keep
Important Message from Medicare
Every inpatient gets it within two days of admission, and again before discharge. It states your right to medically necessary care, to be involved in decisions, and to appeal. The appeal instructions are printed on it.
Medicare Outpatient Observation Notice
If you are under observation rather than admitted, the hospital must give you this in writing within 36 hours and explain it out loud.
“Is he admitted as an inpatient, or under observation?” Observation looks identical from the bed — same room, same gown. But Medicare pays for skilled nursing rehab only after a 3-day inpatient stay, and observation days do not count. Three nights in a hospital bed, then rehab, can arrive as a bill for the entire rehab stay.
New Jersey's CARE Act — What the Hospital Owes You
- At admission you must be offered the chance to name a caregiver in the record. Do it.
- That caregiver must be notified by the time the discharge order is written.
- The hospital must consult you and issue a written discharge plan that names a specific hospital employee you can call afterward.
- The hospital must teach you the care tasks — plain language, with a demonstration and a chance to ask questions.
Before You Leave the Building
The 72-Hour Home Plan
Put every bottle from home on the table next to the new prescriptions and ask which ones he stops. Hospitals start drugs, change doses, and substitute — but nobody clears the old bottles off the kitchen counter. Doubled doses and duplicate blood thinners are how people get hurt in week one.
If a Discharge Feels Too Early
You can appeal — free, fast, and you are not billed while it's pending. New Jersey's Medicare discharge appeal organization is Commence Health: 866-815-5440, TTY 711, available 24 hours.