Home Health Care Agency: Court Reviews Factors For Obtaining Certificate Of Need
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
November 1995
Quick Summary: The legal criteria for the state to select one applicant over another for a certificate of need to be licensed to provide home health services include the following:
Availability and advantages of alternative proposals.
Need for the project.
Population statistics and growth.
Effect on existing facilities or services.
Accessibility by medically underserved groups in the community.
Community reaction.
New construction or outlays for capital costs.
Proposed charges and fees for services vs. existing market cost structures.
Competing applicants’ experience ratings. COURT OF CIVIL APPEALS OF ALABAMA , 1995.
Opening a home health care agency requires issuance of a certificate of need under state law in Alabama. The Court of Civil Appeals of Alabama was called upon to review the decision of a lower court, which had overturned the decision of the state health planning agency. The state health planning agency had chosen a home health service agency operated by an established acute care hospital, over a rival service provider newer in the field.
The court ruled that a court should not substitute its own judgment for the judgment of an administrative agency, since specialized administrative agencies are recognized by law as having special competence in their specific jurisdictional areas. A court will only look to see that the agency has weighed the factors it is mandated by law to consider, and has not made a decision on "arbitrary or capricious" grounds. In this case the higher court reinstated the decision of the state health planning agency in favor of the home health agency being operated by an established hospital.
Home Health vs. Hospital, 655 So. 2d 995 (Ala. Civ. App., 1995).