Authorizes hospice residences to care for up to 16 patients

1 Co-sponsor

• William J. Larkin Jr.

BILL NUMBER:S5534A

Title of bill

An act to amend the public health law, in relation to authorizing hospice residences to care for up to 16 patients

Purpose

The bill would allow hospice residences to have up to sixteen beds of which up to four per each sixteen bed residence would be allowed to be dually-certified as residential and inpatient hospice beds.

Summary of provisions

Section one of the bill amends § 4002 of the Public Health Law (PHL) to increase the currently allowable beds in a hospice residence from eight to sixteen beds and to permit hospice residences to have up to 25% dually-certified as residential and inpatient hospice beds.

Section two amends PHL § 4014 to clarify that hospice residences under the pilot program may also have up to 25% dual beds.

Section three provides the effective date.

Justification

Chapter 532 of 1995 authorized the establishment of hospice residences which provide interdisciplinary end-of-life care to hospice-eligible individuals. However, this law limited the number of allowable beds to eight. In 2003, a hospice residence pilot project was established (Chapter 394 of 2003) in an effort to create flexibility within the hospice residence program and to determine if residences could benefit from economies of scale based on an increase in capacity of not more than sixteen beds.

In response to the desire of some hospices to provide a higher level of care in their residences in order to avoid transfer of patients to inpatient units, legislation allowing beds dually-certified as residential and inpatient was enacted into law (Chapter 154 of 2004). However, hospice residences that were established under the pilot project were precluded from this dual bed certification.

Since the establishment of the initial hospice residence program over eighteen years ago, it has been shown that this program has been successful. In addition, the pilot program has shown the benefit of increasing the number of beds to the fiscal viability of the hospice residences. However, precluding hospice residences in the pilot program from dual bed certification creates an unnecessary barrier to hospice. Terminally ill patients who are in hospitals due to the need for extensive symptom management and are unlikely to return home, could be transferred to hospice residences sooner to receive the expert symptom management from hospice dedicated staff that has the expertise to do so.

Legislative history

New bill.

Fiscal implications

None.

Effective date

Immediately; provided that the provisions shall apply to hospice residences established prior to the effective date, as well as those created thereafter.