Assisted living residents would have the right to appeal involuntary discharges under a bill introduced in the Kansas Legislature.
Kansas House Bill 2004, known as Charlie’s Bill, is sponsored by state Rep. Ron Highland (R-Wamego) and comes 10 years after Charles Imthurn, who had Alzheimer’s disease, died from transfer trauma nine days after being evicted from a Kansas assisted living community.
The bill previously was introduced during a COVID-19-shortened session last year. It is scheduled for a Thursday hearing.
Linda MowBray, president and CEO of the Kansas Health Care Association, said the group has an issue with the appeal timeframe in the bill. Language in the bill states that if a resident receives a 30-day involuntary discharge notice, the resident or family have up to 15 days to file an appeal, after which the Department of Kansas Administrative Procedures has 30 days to hold a hearing.
“So now we’re at 45 days,” MowBray told McKnight’s Senior Living. The bill does not change the ability of a community to discharge an individual immediately if there is a potential for the resident to harm himself/herself or others, she added. And much of the language in the bill already is in existing regulations, MowBray said.
“There are always suggestions that the home should hire more people or bring in more people. That’s a slippery slope,” she said, adding that a community has to define its scope of practice and limits to its services. Although the KHCA supports giving residents “as many rights as they possibly can,” she said, involuntary discharges only can occur in limited circumstances.
Under current rules and regulations, residential care facilities can evict residents for specific reasons, such as if the resident poses a danger to others, if a resident’s needs no longer can be met by the community, or if the resident no longer can pay. A physician must sign off on the move, and 30 days’ advance notice is required. And in Kansas, assisted living communities are exempt from landlord-tenant eviction laws.
“It’s not in the best interest for the resident or facility if a home is forced to care for that individual when they can’t meet their needs,” MowBray said. “That’s just a recipe for disaster.”
If a community has done “ethical marketing,” meaning that its professionals have talked with the resident and family members about “what we do, how we do it, and when is when,” she said, then in most cases, it’s the family that is making the decision to move a resident to another level of care.
“Open communication, that understanding up front of ‘when is when,’ really makes this need for a hearing kind of unnecessary,” MowBray said, adding that she will be submitting testimony on the bill this week.
Debra Harmon Zehr, president and CEO of LeadingAge Kansas, told McKnight’s Senior Living that “a lot of issues with consumer awareness and education about assisted living and the amount of care that can be provided in this setting” exist.
“House Bill 2004 does not solve that root issue,” she said. “It only endangers residents who need a higher level of care than what can be safely provided in that setting, and it threatens the existence of all residential care settings by forcing them to become nursing homes.”
LeadingAge Kansas, Zehr said, maintains that residents of the state would prefer to preserve an option for older adults who need some help short of full nursing home care while finding ways to improve transparency and education around senior living options.
The state’s long-term care ombudsman told the Dodge City Daily Globe that the agency investigated 79 cases and received more than 200 calls about evictions last year from consumers. She said that it was No. 1 complaint to the office in Kansas and is an issue that has become bigger during the pandemic.
Proponents of the legislation said that establishing an appeals process is crucial to giving residents more power and enforcement ability.
Imthurn’s widow, Rachel, had pursued legal challenges to the eviction, but she was told that laws needed to be strengthened before any action could be taken.
