Last week, I described the different long-term care facilities. There are three primary long-term care facilities: assisted living residences, nursing facilities, and continuing care retirement communities (or CCRC).
This week, I wanted to write a little about the practical aspects of entering these facilities. Your rights can vary quite a bit in these different facilities, and those rights can have a practical aspect on you.
Nursing facilities are governed by the Nursing Home Reform Act, a law that has existed since 1987. There are various rights guaranteed to every nursing facility resident. The right to privacy, the right to confidentiality, the right to be free of restraints, the right of free choice are just a few of the rights guaranteed to every nursing facility resident in the United States.
A nursing facility also cannot obtain a guarantee of private payment from a third-party and it cannot require a prospective resident to guarantee private payment for any length of time or to refrain from applying for Medicaid benefits. Nursing facilities also cannot treat residents who are eligible for Medicaid benefits differently than those residents who are ineligible for Medicaid benefits.
For those residents who are eligible for Medicaid benefits, nursing facilities must accept Medicaid as payment in full. For instance, a nursing facility cannot ask the resident’s family to supplement the resident’s stay in the nursing facility if the resident is eligible for Medicaid benefits.
Almost every nursing facility in the state of New Jersey accepts Medicaid benefits. If the facility accepts Medicaid benefits, then it must agree to accept a minimum amount of its residents as Medicaid beneficiaries. For instance, a facility must agree to accept at a minimum 45% of its residents as Medicaid beneficiaries.
In almost every nursing facility, every bed in the facility is dual certified for both a Medicare and Medicaid patient, meaning that in those beds, the facility must accept a resident who is eligible for Medicare or Medicaid. This can be very important because most people enter a nursing facility after being discharged from a hospital. The resident enters the nursing facility to receive rehabilitative services, frequently as a Medicare beneficiary.
The family may decide that the resident needs to remain in the facility after his rehab is over. The resident will then switch to being either a privately paying resident or a Medicaid beneficiary.
The nursing facility might tell the family that they don’t have any Medicaid beds, but as stated above, in most facilities, every bed is dual certified for Medicare and Medicaid patients. Chance are quite high that the resident already is in a Medicaid bed—the same bed from which he was receiving rehabilitative services covered by the Medicare program.
Since the nursing facility cannot require a resident to refrain from applying for Medicaid benefits pursuant to the Nursing Home Reform Act, the facility cannot prevent the resident from applying for Medicaid benefits to cover the cost of the Medicaid certified bed in which he currently lies his head. The facility also must refrain from requiring the family (a third-party) from guaranteeing private payment for the resident’s stay.
Knowing that they cannot discharge you simply because you are converting from a short-term Medicare beneficiary to a long-term Medicaid beneficiary, many nursing facilities pressure the resident or his family to remove the resident from the facility. “We don’t have any Medicaid beds.” “We don’t take a person Medicaid pending.” “You will have to take the resident home and care for him in your home.” These are common statements that nursing facility staff make to family members. These statements are almost always incorrect.
Next week, I will write about your rights in an assisted living residence and a CCRC. Hint: Those rights are substantially less than your rights in a nursing facility.