PA Elder Law Institute Session on CCRCs and LPCs Will Discuss Pending Legislation and Indicators on Financial Performance

As I mentioned earlier, Pennsylvania’s annual Elder Law Institute is July 19 and 20 in Harrisburg.  On the morning of the first day, I’m on a panel examining new issues in Continuing Care Retirement Communities (and Life Plan Communities), along with Linda Anderson, an elder law attorney, Kimber Latsha, who frequently represents health care and senior living providers including CCRCs, and  Dr. David Sarcone, a Dickinson College business professor with background in accounting and health care management.  

I’m especially looking forward to the discussion of Pennsylvania 2018 House Bill 2291, introduced in April of this year, but already moving from one committee, to its first of three considerations on the floor, to the Rules Committee, with amendments.  In other words, this bill seems to have “legs.”  The sponsors of the bill are calling it an “Independent Senior Living Facility Privacy Act.”  As with most catchy titles for pending legislation, the details are a bit more complicated.  In this instance the bill’s lead sponsor is from a county where a single CCRC was investigated by the State Department of Human Services following a complaint that “staffing levels” were inadequate, leaving certain residents allegedly at risk.  The Department of Human Services issued an adverse order in May 2017 related to certain aspects at the facility and apparently that order is the subject of administrative appeals.  

The provider contests the order, and in written testimony submitted to the Pennsylvania House Committee on Aging and Older Adults Services, the CEO explained his company’s position that the investigators were abusing their authority by entering independent living (IL) units, questioning IL residents, and thus failed to respect the individual autonomy of residents not actually living in “personal care” facilities, facilities that would be subject to HS authority:

“We feel that DHS is inappropriately applying the term ‘premises’ [from the personal care regulations] as the grounds and building on the same grounds, used for providing personal care services.  Each senior apartment is a ‘separate individual leasehold,’ where an inhabitant, the lessee of the apartment leases an apartment and is afforded the enjoyment and freedom to engage family and third party services.”

At the core of this issue is a question about expectations of the public and the residents about care in “independent living” units of a licensed “continuing care community.” (Pennsylvania has at least one pending wrongful death suit involving an entirely different CCRC, where one issue is whether the CCRC’s alleged awareness of an IL resident’s worsening dementia was ignored.  She allegedly died of complications of exposure after wandering and being locked out of her IL apartment complex on a cold night.) 

The proposed legislation would exclude “independent senior living facilities” (including public housing outside of the CCRC context) from future state Human Services investigations, including investigations by the Long-Term Care Ombudsman. 

I expect we will also be talking about financial performance numbers of both for-profit and nonprofit CCRCs — especially as some of the numbers suggest that some operations both sides of the industry “profit” line may be struggling to “live within their means.”  

In other words, there will be some especially “hot” topics for discussion.