Currently, Governor Mark Dayton’s proposed budget and the Health and Human Services Omnibus bills passed by the Minnesota Senate and House of Representatives contain provisions to eliminate the Planned Closure Rate Adjustment (PCRA) and the Single Bed Room Incentive (SBI). Given the fact that the Governor and both houses of the legislature have proposed to eliminate one or both of the incentives, providers that are considering closing beds and/or creating single bed rooms should consider sending an application to the Department of Human Services (DHS) as soon as possible.

While a provider has 18 months to exercise an approved partial or full planned closure of beds (MN Statutes 256B.437 states approval of a planned closure expires 18 months after approval by the commissioner of human services, unless commencement of closure has begun), this does not apply to the single bed incentive (SBI). As a result, if the SBI incentive language being proposed in the Senate omnibus budget bill were to pass, there will be no SBI for any bed closures implemented after July 1. There is discussion of providing an 18-month implementation horizon for the SBI as is used by the PCRA, but there is no guarantee such an amendment will be added.

The following table describes these bed closure incentives and how the proposals made by the Governor, Senate, and House compare.

Other things to consider:

• When the closure (generally partial) is done through attrition, then the resident relocation requirements will not likely apply.

• If a full closure is being applied for, then the facility should tell the county the closure is confidential when asking for a letter of support. If closure is approved and then implemented, at that time the facility will need to comply with the resident relocation statute and rules and work with the county.

The Minnesota Department of Human Services website provides a number of resources on this topic.

Todd Bergstrom
952.851.2486
tbergstrom@careproviders.org