Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

State Looks Into Nursing Home Industry

A legislative subcommittee has been appointed to study state regulations on licensing new nursing home beds.

Legislators will review the procedures nursing homes must go through when they apply for expansions of existing facilities. Also, they will look into the rules of the state Services Agency, which determines where new nursing homes are allowed to build and expand.

Some in the industry want to eliminate most state regulations and allow market forces to determine when and where nursing homes will be built. That opinion was shared by a senator on the State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee, which formed the subcommittee that will study nursing home issues.

However, some nursing home owners prefer the existing system. A spokesman for a nursing home trade association asked legislators to maintain the current permitting process. He said that state regulations insure that all 75 counties in Arkansas have adequate nursing home space, whereas an open market could result in some rural areas being underserved. He also said that state regulations keep costs, saving taxpayers money.

Medicaid, a federal and state health care program, pays for about 75 percent of all nursing home care in Arkansas.

At a meeting of the State Agencies Committee, lawmakers heard complaints about the slow and confusing process a nursing home must go through to license new beds. They also heard complaints that existing facilities get preference when a county has a need for new beds. Some legislators expressed concern about the practice of licensing 'phantom beds.'

Under current regulations, a county will not get new nursing home beds unless more than 94.5 percent of the existing beds in the county are full. According to some lawmakers, nursing homes will intentionally keep a certain number of beds empty so that the threshold for adding new beds is never reached. In this way nursing homes can keep out competition, they say.

The practice is used by substandard nursing homes to protect their economic interests, and inaccurately gives the impression that an area does not need more beds, a senator said.

Another area that the legislative subcommittee will review is the fairness and consistency of Health Services Agency regulations. The head of the agency told members of the State Agencies Committee that her agency is often sued. She said a nursing home owner told her that the agency's rules makes it easy to file lawsuits over licensing new beds.

Committee members also discussed the possibility of changing rules governing assisted living facilities, which do not provide the level of nursing care available in nursing homes. However, some elderly residents who don't need extensive medical care prefer to live in an assisted living facility because it is less expensive.

Legislators who want to open up the nursing home industry to competition would like to see more assisted living facilities throughout the state.