BILL NUMBER: AB 367	INTRODUCED
	BILL TEXT


INTRODUCED BY   Assembly Members Galgiani and Audra Strickland

                        FEBRUARY 23, 2009

   An act relating to Medi-Cal.


	LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST


   AB 367, as introduced, Galgiani. Medi-Cal: skilled nursing
facilities and intermediate care facilities for persons with
developmental disabilities.
   Existing law provides for the Medi-Cal program, administered by
the State Department of Health Care Services, under which health care
services, including skilled nursing facility services and
intermediate care facility services for persons with developmental
disabilities, are provided to qualified low-income persons.
   This bill would state the intent of the Legislature to enact
legislation that would ensure that facilities serving the elderly and
persons with developmental disabilities receive the uninterrupted
Medi-Cal payments necessary to ensure continuous services for those
who rely on their care.
   Vote: majority. Appropriation: no. Fiscal committee: no.
State-mandated local program: no.


THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:

  SECTION 1.  (a) The Legislature finds and declares all of the
following:
   (1) Skilled nursing facilities and intermediate care facilities
for persons with developmental disabilities provide comprehensive
24-hour care to more than 300,000 of California's most vulnerable
citizens each year.
   (2) Sixty-five percent of the elderly patients in skilled nursing
facilities, and nearly 100 percent of the clients in intermediate
care facilities for persons with developmental disabilities, rely on
Medi-Cal benefits. A delay in Medi-Cal payments places many
individual providers and the people they serve in extreme jeopardy.
   (3) Services provided by skilled nursing facilities and
intermediate care facilities for persons with developmental
disabilities are dictated by very prescriptive federal and state
requirements that make it impossible for these providers to discharge
patients, delay services, or change the intensity of their care to
accommodate a delay in reimbursement.
   (4) Because the government is a dominant payor for services
provided by skilled nursing facilities and intermediate care
facilities for persons with developmental disabilities, it is also
impossible for these providers to compensate for delayed Medi-Cal
payments by shifting costs to other payors or generating revenue from
alternative sources.
   (5) In light of the compromised state of the current credit
market, skilled nursing facilities and intermediate care facilities
for persons with developmental disabilities are either unable to
secure short-term loans or forced to pay exorbitant rates for money
they borrow to compensate for the lack of Medi-Cal revenue.
   (b) It is therefore the intent of the Legislature to enact
legislation that would ensure that facilities serving the elderly and
persons with developmental disabilities receive the uninterrupted
Medi-Cal payments necessary to ensure continuous services for those
who rely on their care.