DPH hearing officer finds nursing‑home discharge notice deficient; facility withdraws and will resubmit

A hearing officer for the Connecticut Department of Public Health on July 31, 2025, told staff at the Card Home for the Aged that the facility’s involuntary discharge notice for a resident identified in the hearing as Mr. Slavinski was legally deficient under Conn. Gen. Stat. §19a-535a and indicated the resident’s appeal was likely to be sustained; the facility withdrew the notice and said it would resubmit a corrected notice.

The ruling matters because state law requires specific notice content and a discharge plan tailored to a resident’s individual needs. Hearing officer Aiden Baum said he could not find required elements in the documents the facility submitted and that several formal notice requirements were missing or ambiguous.

Baum, who presided remotely and identified the statutory standard that the facility must prove compliance by a preponderance of the evidence, flagged multiple deficiencies in the facility’s paperwork. He pointed to inconsistent dates between copies of the discharge letter — one copy in the record was dated June 19, 2025, while the version the facility said it placed in the resident’s mailbox was dated July 24,…