Provides a mental hygiene legal service to certain patients or residents of residential healthcare facilities

Summary of specific provisions

Sections 1 of the bill amends section 47.01 subdivision (a) of the mental hygiene law to include patients and residents of residential healthcare facilities including nursing homes who have been directly admitted from a facility licensed by the Office of Mental Health and who have a serious mental illness and are receiving services for such illness.

Section 2 of the bill provides for an immediate effective date.

Justification

The NYS Court of Appeals, the State's highest court, recently ruled that Mental Hygiene Legal Services (MHLS) lacks jurisdiction to represent mentally ill individuals who have been admitted to nursing homes from psychiatric centers and psychiatric hospital wards because the Office of Mental Health does not license the facilities. The legislature amended the law in 1993 to significantly expand MHLS's jurisdiction to include individuals in a range of other in and out-patient facilities without regard to the type of facility or a person's lack of legal admission status in order to avoid the need for MHLS to do battle to establish a jurisdictional foothold. Unfortunately, by a vote of 4-3, the Court of Appeals decided that those amendments are not sufficient to afford seriously mentally ill individuals access of protective MHLS when in a setting not licensed by OMH.

In the mid 1990's a practice of transferring individuals from psychiatric centers and psychiatric wards of hospitals to specialized units in nursing homes called neurobiological units (NEU's) where they continued to receive intensive psychiatric treatment was begun. These individuals were not there for traditional nursing home care. A series of award winning articles in the New York Times focused in part on this practice and claimed that the residents in the NBD were being deprived their legal protection. The article claimed that the NED's were like being involuntarily committed to a psychiatric center without any legal protections. MHLS began looking into the matter and sought access to the residents and their records in order to provide advocacy and legal representation. Nursing homes denied them access and in June 2003, MHLS commenced a court action seeking jurisdiction

to protect the rights of these individuals. Nursing homes have since shut down NED's, however there continues to be a steady flow of seriously mentally ill individuals being transferred from OMH licensed psychiatric centers and hospital wards to nursing homes. Seriously mentally ill individuals deserve the same protections that they would be afforded had they remained in the OMH licensed facilities. They are not being discharged because they have been cured or stabilized. If these individuals continue to require intensive, institutional care and treatment that a nursing home provides, they must continue to be provided with the protections that MHLS was designed to provide. Many of these individuals have been in nursing homes for years without legal representation waiting this court decision. This bill will clearly put in statute MHLS' authority to provide legal assistance to these seriously mentally ill individuals who are alleged to be in need of care and treatment in such restrictive settings.

Prior legislative history

2011-12: S.3423A/A.126A - Passed Assembly; Reported to Finance 2010: A.10824-B/S.7432-A - Vetoed Memo 6811

Fiscal implications

No new costs.

Effective date

Immediately.