Nursing Home Arbitration Ban Postponed

Last fall, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency under Health and Human Services (HHS), essentially barred any nursing home or assisted living facility that receives federal funding from requiring that its residents resolve any disputes in arbitration, instead of in court. It was the most significant overhaul of the agency’s rules governing federal funding of long-term care facilities in decades. The nursing home industry maintains arbitration offers a less costly alternative to court. Allowing more lawsuits, the industry says, could drive up costs and force some homes to close. This was the case in the early 2000s, when many excess verdicts were recorded in Florida, forcing players out of the state or out of business altogether. Lawyers who work with the elderly say that people are being admitted to nursing homes at one of the most stressful moments of their lives. When CMS essentially barred any requiring residents to resolve any disputes in arbitration, federal courts were quick to issue injunctions in industry suits. Now CMS has issued a memo that it will not attempt to enforce the ban until the injunction is lifted. With the impending Trump Administration, it seems possible that the new CMS rule will die altogether. Congressional Republicans have vowed to roll back many regulations approved in the final months of the Obama Administration, such as this one. I do a fair amount of long-term care arbitrations, usually serving as the chair of a panel. These are difficult cases and are sometimes better suited to be resolved in private before knowledgeable and fair neutrals, rather than presented to juries. Arbitration of health care cases can be streamlined for counsel, saving the parties costs and often providing a quicker result than the courts. See more here-- http://bit.ly/2ibNZ8G and http://bit.ly/2j5R8XK