Medicaid Cuts: Nursing Facility Not Required to Keep Ventilator Unit Open, Court Says
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
September 1998
Quick Summary: The nursing facility had the right to close its ventilator unit when a change in Medicaid reimbursement rules made it financially burdensome and medically unsafe to continue to provide ventilator services. No state or Federal law requires a nursing facility to provide ventilator services.
Upon deciding to close the ventilator unit, the nursing facility was unable to meet the needs of its ventilator-dependent residents, and transfer was necessary for their welfare.
COURT OF APPEALS OF INDIANA, 1998.A nursing facility made the judgment that two respiratory therapists were necessary twenty-four hours a day to meet the needs of its seven ventilator-dependent residents. Medicaid cut that back to one, twelve hours per day.
Once the facility followed proper procedures by giving advance notice and arranging other placements, it could transfer the residents and close the ventilator unit, the Court of Appeals of Indiana ruled.
The court’s rationale was that once the unit was closed and the specialized ventilator services the residents needed were no longer available at the facility, the facility could not meet their needs and grounds existed to transfer them away.
Bryant v. Indiana Department of Health, 695 N.E. 2d 975 (Ind. App., 1998).