Human Services Committee
AN ACT CONCERNING DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SERVICES AND AGING PROGRAMS
SUMMARY: This act explicitly allows the Department of Social Services (DSS) to pay an acute care general hospital for a dually eligible (Medicare and Medicaid) patient's administratively necessary days when Medicare does not reimburse the hospital for those days. “Administratively necessary days” are those days when a patient remains in an acute care hospital, even though he or she no longer needs that level of care, while the hospital finds an appropriate placement. In practice, DSS pays for these days and subsequently recoups the payments during the cost settlement process with the hospital. (DSS is in the process of converting from a hospital payment methodology based on a patient's length of stay to one based on a patient's diagnosis. )
The act also makes several minor and technical changes, including changes conforming (1) to the transfer of the Fall Prevention Program's oversight to the Department on Aging and (2) a law regarding DSS' regulation adoption procedure to current practice.
EFFECTIVE DATE: Upon passage, except for a provision that makes technical changes, which is effective October 1, 2014, and the provision pertaining to acute care payments, which is effective July 1, 2014.
OLR Tracking: KMD: JR: PF: am