Long Term Care & Senior Living Blog

First they came for cable TV, then they came for the 9-to-5 workday. Now, promptly after a nutritious breakfast of avocado toast, millennials are lining up Monday mornings at Court houses to invade jury pools in increasing numbers. Though keeping younger jurors out of the final jury lineup was previously a simpler task due to the smaller number of eligible millennials, individuals born between 1981 and 1996 are now all adults and are regularly receiving jury duty notices. Millennials are now the largest living generation, recently surpassing the baby boomers. Defense attorneys must adapt and change their jury trial tactics in order to account for this change in the makeup of the jury pool, and to account for the changing strategies of opposing counsel. In order to do that, defense attorneys must understand these young jurors and how they operate.

Pilot Program To Transfer Facility Inspections From The Department Of Health And Senior Services to Local Health Departments (HB – 1555) Missouri Representative James Neeley is sponsoring a bill that would create a pilot program to transfer the authority to inspect nursing homes from the Department of Health and Senior Services to local health departments. Participation in the pilot program would be at the option and expense of any local health department that elects to participate. As currently drafted, this proposed legislation would have an automatic sunset date six years after its initial implementation.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) advised in June that it was going to back off its prior position on prohibiting nursing homes from including arbitration provisions in admission contracts. CMS has reversed its prior position and is currently drafting a new rule, which would allow pre-occurrence arbitration agreements to stand. The Fair Arbitration Now Coalition, the AARP, and other elderly advocacy groups are against CMS’ new position. 

As every long-term care facility doing business in Illinois can attest, Medicaid eligibility determinations and benefit awards have been slow, with HFS often falling months, if not years, behind. A group of SNFs and their residents are trying to change that. Several healthcare providers and their patients have filed suit against Felicia Norwood in her official capacity as the Director of the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services (“HFS”) in federal court.

On September 28, 2016, CMS created the “Arbitration Rule”, banning arbitration agreements in nursing home admission agreements. By creating this Rule, CMS took the position that, due to the inequality of bargaining power between potential nursing home residents and long term care facilities, those facilities could no longer require, or even offer, binding arbitration as part of the admission process or at any point prior to a dispute arising.