What Medicare Part A Covers
Since Part A is hospital insurance, it provides coverage for services that are listed below:
- Inpatient hospital care: This involves all care you receive after a physician admits you into a hospital. Medicare covers up to 90 days for each benefit period in a normal hospital. Additionally, you get 60 lifetime reserve days. Plus, it covers up to 190 lifetime days in a psychiatric hospital that is Medicare certified.
- Skilled nursing facility care: Medicare covers your room and board, and some services provided in a skilled nursing facility. These include tube feedings, wound care, and medications. Medicare covers up to 100 days of each benefit period. In order to qualify, you need to have spent at least three ensuing days in the hospital within 30 days of admission to a skilled nursing facility. Plus, you must have required skilled nursing or therapy services.
- Home health care: While Part B typically covers this, Part A coverage will ensue if you have spent at least three successive days in the hospital within 14 days of receiving home care. Medicare covers up to 100 days of daily care or an unlimited amount of periodic care.
- Hospice care: beneficiaries qualify for hospice care if they meet these requirements: your doctor determines that you are terminally ill (life expectancy of 6 months), you want palliative care instead of hospital care to cure the illness, or you sign that you want hospice care instead of treatment in hospital