Law seeks to require licensure for Nevada group home referral agencies
Agencies that refer patients to group homes would have to be licensed by the state if a Nevada Senate bill introduced Wednesday becomes law.
A state audit and Review-Journal reporting last year found that hospitals were discharging patients into the hands of unlicensed facilities with unsafe conditions.
“The bill is focused on a narrow piece of that situation and will help us solve for one piece of the problem,” Sen. Julia Ratti, D-Sparks, said in her presentation Wednesday to the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, which she chairs.
Senate bill 92 also calls for the state health department’s Division of Public and Behavioral Health to review all unlicensed group homes to determine whether they should be regulated.
The bill would impact agencies like Above and Beyond, LLC, run by a woman named Eileen Lee, which placed a woman discharged from North Vista Hospital into the care of an unlicensed group home, where she was found dead less than 24 hours later.
Lee, along with the hospital and others who navigated 33-year-old Rayshauna Roy’s care in the days before her death in February 2018, are being sued by Roy’s mother and children.
Contact Jessie Bekker at jbekker@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4563. Follow @jessiebekks on Twitter.