Before you pay for care in Las Vegas
Ask where they worked before you write the first cheque. Home care in Southern Nevada is paid for out of savings by most families who need it. If the person needing care worked at the Nevada Test Site — for any company, in any job — there may be a federal benefit that pays for skilled home health instead.
The two subjects almost never meet.
A family starts pricing care because of a fall, a discharge, or a diagnosis. Nothing about that moment prompts anyone to ask what the patient did for a living forty years ago, so the question does not get asked until the money is already going out.
By then the answer is the same as it would have been earlier. It is just later, and more expensive.
The Department of Labor decides every claim. Alara assesses the patient, coordinates the physician documentation and the home-health authorization, and provides the authorized care. It does not file claims and nothing here is a determination of eligibility.
Did they ever work out at the Test Site?
You did not have to work for the Department of Energy. Its contractors and subcontractors are covered the same way, and most of the people who worked at the Nevada Test Site were never federal employees. They worked for REECo, for EG&G, for Wackenhut, for a paving company or a bus line or a drilling outfit out of Las Vegas.
The answer usually arrives as a company name rather than a site name — REECo, EG&G, Wackenhut, a bus line, a drilling outfit. Any of those is the start of a real answer.
See all 472 companies on the DOL list → Before you choose a nursing home →
Then this is not the route, and that is worth knowing too.
EEOICPA only covers work at a covered Department of Energy facility. If there was none, this program is not the answer, and being told so quickly is better than a month of hope. There are other routes for some families — VA Aid and Attendance for wartime veterans and their surviving spouses is the most commonly missed.
Four questions, and a nurse reads the answers.
Where the work was. Who the paycheck came from. Roughly when. What a doctor has said about your health since. That is enough for a nurse to say whether there is something here worth opening — and if there is not, to say that too.
Nothing here is a determination of eligibility, and nobody takes a percentage of anything. Claim help through the Department of Labor’s Resource Center is free.
What people ask first.
We are already paying privately. Is it too late?
No. An accepted claim opens the medical benefit going forward. It does not reimburse what a family has already spent, which is the reason to ask the question as early as possible.
Does the patient have to stop the care they have now?
No. Nothing has to change while a claim is being looked at, and a patient with an accepted card can choose which authorized provider delivers the care.
Do we pay Alara to find out?
No. A case review costs nothing, and claim help through the Department of Labor’s Resource Center is free. Nobody should be taking a percentage of a federal award.
A nurse reads it, not a form.
A case review takes a few minutes and needs no records, no claim number and no appointment. Nothing here is a determination of eligibility.
Before you choose a nursing home → Asking on behalf of a parent → Check a work history →