No. SB 788
Filed under Healthcare.
Health Care; Authorizing the Agency for Health Care Administration to authorize certain agencies and organizations to access, use, and run reports in a specified database for certain purposes; authorizing assisted living facilities to retain certain licenses under certain circumstances; requiring referral agencies for assisted living facilities to disclose specified information to a consumer; providing requirements for contracts entered into between a referral agency and an assisted living facility; creating the Assisted Living Task Force adjunct to the agency for specified purposes, etc.
Plain English Summary
AI-GENERATEDAssisted living facilities no longer must alert the state within one business day of a serious incident like a resident's death or brain injury; the only deadline left is a full report within 15 days.
A new 'referral agency' industry is regulated for the first time: agencies steering consumers to assisted living facilities must disclose fees and conflicts, and facilities that pay them are shielded from discipline over it.
Facilities can now keep a specialty license through renewal even with no qualifying residents, get a 30-day grace period on late renewals, and have an ownership change wipe their public violation history clean.
Trained, unlicensed facility staff, not just nurses, may now dial doses and attach needles on prefilled insulin pens for residents, once a nurse or pharmacist confirms they are competent to do it.
AIFacilities currently must alert the agency within one business day of an adverse incident such as a death, brain damage, or fracture. That fast-alert duty is deleted outright; only the slower 15-day full report requirement remains.
AIBusinesses that refer consumers to assisted living facilities for a fee must give consumers a disclosure statement covering fees and contracts, and may not refer to a facility they have a financial stake in, hold a consumer's power of attorney, or knowingly refer to an unlicensed facility.
AIA facility that pays a referral agency in a manner compliant with the new section cannot be disciplined for that payment, even if some other law would otherwise treat the arrangement as grounds for action.
AIAssistance with self-administration of medication, a task unlicensed but trained facility staff may perform, is expanded to cover dialing a prefilled insulin pen's dose and attaching a new needle to it, tasks previously excluded as injection-route administration.
AIAn adverse incident is redefined as one over which facility personnel actually had real power to act, not merely one they hypothetically 'could' have controlled, tightening the standard for which events trigger mandatory reporting.
AIThe public disclosure of a facility's violations over the past 60 months now stops applying once the facility changes ownership, as long as the old and new owners don't share a controlling interest.
AIA facility licensed for extended congregate care, limited nursing, or limited mental health services can hold onto that license through its next renewal even if it currently has no residents using those services, so long as staffing lapses are reported.
AIA renewal application submitted up to 30 days after a license expires must still be accepted for review if it explains the delay, though the agency may still charge late fees.