Grading Guide for Researching Transitional Care Facilities

Researching a transitional care facility can be challenging if you don’t know what you should be looking for, or don’t know what separates a good facility from a bad one. At Walker Methodist, we know how important your responsibility is, so we've put together a research checklist helper to guide you during the research phase of finding the right transitional care facility.

Knowing What's Important in a Transitional Care Facility (TCU)

When it comes to researching transitional care facilities, the goal is to pick the clear choice, but in order to do that, you have to give each contestant a grade. There are a number of criteria you'll have to consider when marking TCUs, and to get you started, here are some of the most important factors you'll be looking at when researching transitional care facilities:

• Staff
• Location
• Levels and types of care provided
• Residents
• On-site amenities
• Insurance
• Reputation
• Visitations

Although these are very broad topics, they will give you an idea of what to look for when researching the best transitional care facility.

Creating a TCU Research Checklist

We've put together the below checklist as a resource for you to utilize as a reference to get you started on your search.

Choosing the Right Facility

Ultimately, choosing the right transitional care facility is all about finding a place where your loved one will feel welcome, comfortable, and happy. This requires a unique combination of many things, including that your loved one will get personalized care and attention, they will feel at home, the staff is friendly and capable, and that other residents are welcoming and supportive.

When possible, take your loved one along for facility tours, collect brochures from each TCU you visit, and talk to your loved one about the information you’ve collected about each community.

Finding the right transitional care facility is all about knowing where to look, and knowing what to research when you're looking at TCU options. Some of the most important elements of your journey will be the initial research phase, the facility tour, the checklist, and the brochures, all of which can help you determine which TCU will best meet the needs of your loved one.