Important: CMS Issues FInal Rules on Requirements for LTC Facilities

The Federal Nursing Home Reform Act went into effect back in 1987. Those accompanying regs have been in place a long time. Now CMS has issued final rules that revise the LTC regs.  The official publication date is Oct. 4, 2016.  The regs are being implemented in phases, with phase one going into effect on November 28, 2016.  Here is the Federal Register summary:

This final rule will revise the requirements that Long-Term Care facilities must meet to participate in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. These changes are necessary to reflect the substantial advances that have been made over the past several years in the theory and practice of service delivery and safety. These revisions are also an integral part of our efforts to achieve broad-based improvements both in the quality of health care furnished through federal programs, and in patient safety.

The regs are over 700 pages and are available here. Here are the effective dates: “Phase 1 must be implemented by November 28, 2016… Phase 2 must be implemented by November 28, 2017 … Phase 3 must be implemented by November 28, 2019 …  A detailed discussion regarding the different phases of the implementation timeline can be found in Section B. II ‘Implementation Date.'”

42 C.F.R. 483.10 is updated but CMS is “retaining all existing residents’ rights and updating the language and organization of the resident rights provisions to improve logical order and readability, clarify aspects of the regulation where necessary, and updating provisions to include advances such as electronic communications.”

There’s a new reg, 42. C.F.R. 483.21, “Comprehensive Person-Centered Care Planning” wherein CMS, among other things, is “requiring facilities to develop and implement a baseline care plan for each resident, within 48 hours of their admission,  the instructions needed to provide effective and person-centered care that meets professional standards of quality care.”

One of the most watched sections involved the use of arbitration clauses. 42 C.F.R. 483.70 now includes, among other things, the following: “Binding Arbitration Agreements: We are requiring that facilities must not enter into an agreement for binding arbitration with a resident or their representative until after a dispute arises between the parties. Thus, we are prohibiting the use of pre-dispute binding arbitration agreements.”

This is just a brief overview of a few provisions. We’ll blog about more of them later, but for now, be sure to read the new regs. They’re important!

P.S. this post has been updated to correct the publication and effective dates (I was too excited)