Tips on Residents’ Rights in Nursing Homes: Bed Holds
The Federal Nursing Home Reform Act and New Jersey Nursing Home Residents Bill of Rights along with their regulations create numerous enforceable rights and protections for nursing home residents. Among these are the obligations to keep the bed available for certain amounts of time if a resident is temporarily out of the facility.
There are times that a resident must be transferred to a...
Thoughtful Catholic approach to conversations about end of life care
I had the opportunity today to read a very thoughtful article about a meeting of Catholic physicians who are helping their very ill patients to wrestle with hard decisions about whether to utilize palliative care in place of active treatment with mechanical life support. The organization is the Catholic Health Association of the United States (CHA) and the online newsletter article in the...
Tips on the nursing home admissions process
The need to place a beloved family member in a nursing home may be one of the most harrowing and heartbreaking decisions a person has to make. Not only is there a terrible sense of guilt and failure, but the sheer cost of a single month in a nursing home is staggering, and leaves the family with a bleak view of their future security. They feel vulnerable, because they are at the mercy of...
Hospital’s Failure to apply for charity care for psychiatric emergency patient leaves hospital holding the bag
DRAFT MUST REWRITE text from daily briefingHEALTH CARE LAW
New Jersey has a Charity Care program which pays for hospital care for uninsured individuals who meet the stringent income and asset requirements and also file an application. If an eligible individual enters the hospital as an emergency room admission, the hospital is required to prepare and submit the application and to take...
Section 8 housing rules for live-in caregivers
Did you know that if a person with physical or cognitive disabilities resides in section 8 funded HUD housing, the law requires the Public Housing Agency (PHA) to allow a necessary home health aide to reside with the tenant? The concept is that the PHA is required to make a reasonable accommodation for the tenant’s needs pursuant to the Americans with Disabilities Act, to enable the...
Mass. Supreme Court rules that Stored Communications Act doesn’t bar Yahoo from release of decedent’s emails to his Estate’s Personal Representatives
People often wonder what happens to someone’s stored digital data such as emails, electronic banking, or facebook accounts if the person dies. This has been a vexing problem for surviving family members who wish to read or save that data as part of the family legacy. The federal Stored Communications Act (“SCA”), which is 18 USC 2701 et seq, prohibits disclosure of the...
Wyoming Supreme Court holds that Agent under Power of Attorney had authority to consent to arbitration in nursing home admission contract
It is not uncommon for nursing home admissions contracts to include provisions requiring the resident to consent to binding arbitration of any dispute. In this recent case in Wyoming, the question was the enforceability of an optional arbitration clause. The nursing home admission contract for Aletha Boyd was signed by her Agent under a General Durable Power of Attorney (DPOA) which...
Section 8 housing eligibility terminated due to Intentional falsification of income data
Tenants who reside in Section 8 housing must certify to their household income every year, because the rent is based on the income. A recent case addressed a termination of eligibility for Section 8 due to willful misrepresentation on the application, coupled with the defense that the misrepresentation was due to the tenant’s severe depression and thus required an accommodation under the...
Once appointed, Guardian should inform third parties
The entry of a Judgment appointing a legal Guardian for an incapacitated person may be the end of the court process, but it marks the start of a new process in which the Guardian has many obligations and responsibilities. After all, the Guardian’s primary obligation is to protect the personal and financial interests of the ward. One of these responsibilities is to “let the world...
Medicaid applicant must prove that funds in Joint account were contributed by other co-owner
An applicant for Medicaid to pay for nursing home care is not eligible if the available resources exceed a certain level. The regulations for New Jersey Medicaid specify how joint accounts are treated: “All funds in the account are resources to the individual, so long as he or she has unrestricted access to the funds (that is, an “or” account) regardless of their source. When...