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News & Notes Archive

March 2020

Posted onAuthorKiara Lopez

In this issue

Watch CANHR’s webinars about Assisted Living and Skilled Nursing Care in the Time of COVID-19

CANHR Attorneys Tony Chicotel and Mike Dark discuss the rapidly changing landscape of facility care and visitation in Residential Care Facilities for the Elderly (RCFEs) amid the Covid-19 crisis.

Click to download Assisted Living Care webinar slides (PDF)

CANHR Attorneys Tony Chicotel and Mike Dark discuss the rapidly changing landscape of facility care and visitation in Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNFs) amid the COVID-19 crisis.

Click to download Nursing Home Care webinar slides (PDF)

Visit CANHR’s COVID-19 News & Resources Website

The evolving Coronavirus crisis has had a worldwide impact that will take a long time to become fully understood. However, it is already certain that long term care consumers and the elderly have been particularly affected by it. We are receiving a lot of inquiries from concerned individuals and organizations. In an effort to keep you all better informed, we have created a website, https://canhrcovidnews.com/ specifically for COVID-19 information, news and resources related to Long Term Care. For the duration of this crisis, we will be posting frequent updates there.


Urgent Action Needed to Protect California Nursing Home Residents from COVID-19 – Contact Governor Newsom

California’s Department of Public Health told the state’s nursing homes last week to prepare to accept patients with coronavirus. Los Angeles County’s Department of Public Health went even further, telling nursing home administrators that they cannot refuse to take COVID-positive patients.Discharging COVID-positive or symptomatic patients into long term care facilities is a terribly misguided plan that the State and counties will come to regret.  Infections will rise and people will die. 

Take action – Contact the Governor and tell him to protect our most vulnerable population – tell your State Senators and Assembly Members that there are alternatives to such a deadly plan. The State and counties are pursuing various strategies to deal with expected hospital overflows, such as contracting with empty hotels and closed hospitals and residential care facilities and by expanding capacity at existing hospitals.

Call or email the Governor today and tell him to stop any plan to send patients testing positive for the COVID-19 virus, or patients showing symptoms of the disease, to California long term care facilities.

Governor Newsom: Telephone: (916) 445-2841 Email: https://govapps.gov.ca.gov/gov40mail/ 

State Senators and Assembly Members: http://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/

CLICK HERE FOR PHONE SCRIPT AND SUGGESTED LETTER

Home and Community Based Spousal Impoverishment Provisions Extended to November

This week, the CARES Act (H.R.748) extended Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) spousal impoverishment rules from May 22, 2020 to November 30, 2020. The provisions expanded by the Affordable Care Act were originally set to sunset five years after the implementation. Spousal Impoverishment gives married applicants seeking HCBS the same financial protections as  institutionalized beneficiaries. Relevant guidance continues to be available in ACWDLs 17-25 and 18-19 and the DHCS SI FLYER.

See CANHR’s factsheet: Using California’s Spousal Impoverishment Rule for Home and Community Based Services

U.S. Department of Justice Announces Nursing Home Initiative

On March 3, Attorney General William P. Barr announced a new initiative to enhance civil and criminal efforts to pursue nursing homes that provide grossly substandard care to their residents. The Department of Justice press release acknowledges that nursing home residents are routinely suffering extreme mistreatment from profiteering owners, stating “all too often, we have found nursing home owners or operators who put profits over patients, leading to instances of gross abuse and neglect.” Nonetheless, the release is short on details of what the initiative is going to do or how it will measure success.

Solorzano Nursing Home Dumps Four Residents Into a No Care Home

Hyde Park Healthcare Center, a nursing home in Los Angeles owned by Crystal Solorzano, was recently found to have dumped four residents, all of whom had extensive care needs, into an unlicensed care facility in April, May, and June of 2019.  The facility staff failed to complete adequate discharge planning for all four residents, including failure to assess whether the residents’ needs could be met in the unlicensed home.  The facility failed to get input from the residents’ physicians and failed to properly notify the residents of their evictions.  One resident, with tuberculosis (TB), was sent to the unlicensed home with the wrong medications and failed to receive his TB medication for 18 days after his eviction.  Another dumped resident had diabetes and a third had end stage renal disease, raising concerns about their ability to get needed insulin and dialysis, respectively.  At the time of the investigation, the whereabouts of two residents were unknown. The owner of the unlicensed home stated “she rents rooms out in her homes to cover the mortgage payments and that the [facility] was aware [that no care was provided].  The facility’s social services designee was fired and the facility was cited and issued a $20,000 state fine along with a hefty federal civil monetary penalty and Medicare payment denial for failing to perform safe discharge planning for the residents.