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Senate adopts amendments to long-term care resident bill of rights; changes include longer notice windows and clinical clarifications
Summary
Senators adopted substantive amendments to Senate Bill 2070 clarifying residents’ notification timing, physician-choice language, storage obligations, restraint-authority, and recording-device rules for long-term care, then placed the bill on the calendar for further consideration.
Senator O'Rourke on the Senate floor on Jan. 24, 2025, described and moved amendments to Senate Bill 2070, a revision of resident bill-of-rights provisions that apply to skilled nursing, basic care and assisted-living settings. The Senate adopted the proposed amendments and placed the bill on the calendar for later consideration.
Why it matters: The amendments aim to reconcile statutory resident-rights language with operational realities in different care settings — particularly rural facilities and assisted-living arrangements governed by landlord-tenant rules — and to ensure clarity for providers, residents and families.
What the amendments do
- Extend timing for required resident information from 14 days to 30 days. "We wanted to make sure that the education was done right, not fast," Senator O'Rourke said on the floor.
- Clarify private-meeting and association rights to make clear that off-site meetings are not covered by the facility’s rules as if they were on-site.
- Revise storage-language expectations so that facilities are responsible for securing personal items "as space allows," reducing the risk that facilities would be required to store large items such as furniture.
- Adjust language about an attending physician so that, in some rural settings, an attending physician may be assigned when choice cannot reasonably be maintained; the amendment retains a preference for resident choice when available.
- Add advanced-practice providers (nurse practitioners and physician assistants) to the list of clinicians authorized to order physical or chemical restraints, aligning the standard with contemporary hospital practice.
- Clarify which recording devices are regulated when used in resident rooms and refine procedures for written notices when an applicant is denied admission because of payment source while preserving resident privacy.
Discussion and stakeholder input: Senator O'Rourke said the amendments were agreed with the long-term care ombudsman, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Long Term Care Association. The transcript records committee engagement and floor explanation of the operational conflicts between skilled nursing standards and landlord-tenant rights in assisted living.
Action taken: The Senate adopted the proposed amendments by voice vote and placed Senate Bill 2070 on the 11th order of business on the calendar for further consideration.
Next steps: The bill will return according to the Senate calendar for a subsequent reading and possible final passage vote.
