Providing for a nursing facility closure and alternative service development process; requiring and providing for the commissioner of finance in cooperation with the commissioner of health to temporarily issue appropriation bonds to establish the process to further state goals of ensuring consumer access to a continuum of older adult services, creating an adequate supply of affordable home based alternatives to nursing home care and providing adequate funding for smaller nursing homes, establishing a separate and special debt service fund for payment of the bonds; modifying certain requirements for requests for proposals for exception from the nursing home bed moratorium and authorizing the commissioner of human services at the recommendation of the commissioner of health to adjust facility medical assistance (MA) payment rates above current limits under certain conditions; establishing an interagency review panel to advise the commissioner of health in the selection and ranking of projects funded through the moratorium exception and nursing facility closure and alternative service development processes; modifying certain criteria for review of proposals and a certain relocation restriction; prescribing the application and approval procedures for the nursing facility closure and alternative service development process; requiring coordination of the process with the moratorium exception process; restricting the use of payments received from the commissioner under the process; providing for the measurement of outcomes, requiring commissioner reports to the legislature on certain dates; requiring the commissioner of finance to track medical assistance savings from bed closures and to use the savings to fund requests for proposals and certain initiatives, requiring deposit of savings in a nursing facility closure account to be established in the general fund; requiring and providing for commissioner of health designation of critical access nursing facilities, requiring medical assistance reimbursement rate increases to the designated facilities; appropriating money to the commissioner of human services for the moratorium exception process, for community services grants and for critical access nursing facility reimbursement rate increases and to the commissioner of finance for bond payments
(mk)