Arkansas

The grounds, as Arkansas describes them

20 CAR § 400-2505(a), Transfer or discharge (Rules for Nursing Homes, Subpart 25, Residents' Rights) — Arkansas Secretary of State, Code of Arkansas Rules, site last updated 8/31/2026, no per-section date, retrieved 2026-09-04 — states that "A resident may be transferred or discharged only for:", in the rule's own order:

"Medical reasons;"

"His or her welfare or the welfare of other residents;"

"The resident presents a danger to the safety or health of other residents;"

"Because the resident no longer needs the services provided by the facility;"

"Nonpayment for his or her stay; or"

"The facility ceases operation."

The rule adds two qualifications reaching the same grounds. "The term "transfer" applies to the movement of the resident from facility to another facility." (§ 400-2505(a)(3)(A)). And "Medical reasons" for transfer or discharge "Shall be based on the resident's needs; and" "Are to be determined and documented by a physician." (§ 400-2505(a)(3)(B)). The rule's own heading for this section reads "6 CAR § 400-2505" where the page's title and citation read "20 CAR § 400-2505"; that is the publisher's text as served, a finding recorded in the change log below and left as found.

The published process

Requesting the hearing

§ 400-2505(d)(1): "An appeals process for residents objecting to transfer or discharge shall be developed by the facility, in accordance with Arkansas Code § 20-10-1005, as amended." (d)(2): "The process shall include:" "The written notice of transfer or discharge shall state the reason for the proposed transfer or discharge." "The notice shall inform the resident that they have the right to appeal the decision to the Secretary of the Department of Human Services within seven (7) calendar days." "The resident must be assisted by the facility in filing the written objection to transfer or discharge;" "Within fourteen (14) days of the filing of the written objections a hearing will be scheduled; and" "A final determination in the matter will be rendered within seven (7) days of the hearing."

No pendency statement is in the sources reviewed: § 400-2505, § 400-2507 (Exercise of rights), and § 400-411 (Admission, transfer, and discharge policies) do not say whether a resident remains at the facility while a written objection is pending. Not stated in the sources reviewed.

The rule names no office, address, or filing form for the Secretary of the Department of Human Services. The department's own File an Appeal page — captured by browser because humanservices.arkansas.gov returns a bare nginx 403 to curl on every path and header set tried — publishes, for the department's administrative hearings generally: "You may email your request to DHS.Appeals@dhs.arkansas.gov or" "You may send your request by mail to:" "Department of Human Services" "Office of Appeals and Hearings" "P.O. Box 1437, Slot S101" "Little Rock, Arkansas 72203-1437". That page does not mention nursing facility discharges anywhere in its text, and whether a § 400-2505 objection goes to that office is not stated in the sources reviewed.

The notice's required contents

§ 400-2505(a)(3)(C): "Reasonable notice of transfer or discharge" means the decision to transfer or discharge a resident "Shall be discussed with the resident; and" "The resident will be told the reason or reasons and alternatives available." The written notice itself, under (d)(2)(A), "shall state the reason for the proposed transfer or discharge" and "shall inform the resident that they have the right to appeal the decision to the Secretary of the Department of Human Services within seven (7) calendar days". Separately, § 400-411(7)(B) states that "The resident or responsible party will be provided written notification of his or her transfer ten (10) days prior to the transfer." No requirement that the notice carry the ombudsman's contact information is stated in the sources reviewed.

Bed-hold and return

The Department of Human Services' Medical Assistance Program Manual Of Cost Reimbursement Rules For Long Term Care Facilities, Chapter 6 ("(July 1, 1999)" "(Last Revised 08/01/2022)"), states: "Facilities that certify that occupancy levels are eighty-five percent (85%) or greater will be paid up to five (5) consecutive days for a leave of absence (LOA) to the hospital." The same chapter states, for a different kind of leave: "Facilities may bill for up to fourteen consecutive days for therapeutic home visits regardless of the occupancy rate." Its census-coding key marks such days "Paid Hospital Leave, Bed Reserved" and "Paid Therapeutic Home Leave, Bed Reserved". No readmission or return provision accompanies this allowance in the manual, and none is stated in the Office of Long-Term Care's Rules for Nursing Homes (20 CAR Part 400, searched in full for this row). Not stated in the sources reviewed.

The three rows above hoist the questions a facility's counsel answers in the first fifteen minutes. They are quotations from Arkansas's published sources, not a determination that any of them applies to any situation.

Notice periods and deadlines, as stated in the sources

All quoted; none calculated.

Thirty days' written notice — § 400-2505(b): "A minimum of thirty (30) days written notice must be given."

Immediate-transfer exception — § 400-2505(c): "Transfer for the welfare of the resident or other residents may be affected immediately if such action is documented in the medical record."

Ten days' written notification of a transfer — § 400-411(7)(B): "The resident or responsible party will be provided written notification of his or her transfer ten (10) days prior to the transfer." Both this period and the thirty-day period above are stated in the same current Part; neither is reconciled here.

Seven calendar days to appeal — § 400-2505(d)(2)(A): the resident has "the right to appeal the decision to the Secretary of the Department of Human Services within seven (7) calendar days."

Fourteen days to schedule the hearing — § 400-2505(d)(2)(B): "Within fourteen (14) days of the filing of the written objections a hearing will be scheduled; and"

Seven days for a final determination — § 400-2505(d)(2)(C): "A final determination in the matter will be rendered within seven (7) days of the hearing."

Five consecutive days of paid hospital leave — the cost-reimbursement manual, Chapter 6: facilities "will be paid up to five (5) consecutive days for a leave of absence (LOA) to the hospital", conditioned on the occupancy certification the same chapter states.

Fourteen consecutive days of paid therapeutic home leave — the cost-reimbursement manual, Chapter 6: facilities "may bill for up to fourteen consecutive days for therapeutic home visits regardless of the occupancy rate."

What any of these periods means for a particular case is for the hearing office or the relevant state process to determine.

Source map

Captured: the four Code and program-site sources in tools/packets/arkansas-packet.txt by recipe; the File an Appeal page in tools/packets/arkansas-packet-dhs.txt by browser; the cost-reimbursement manual's Chapter 6 in tools/packets/arkansas-packet-medicaid.txt by the session's web-fetch tool, the same last-resort status as the File an Appeal capture. Pending: Arkansas Code § 20-10-1005, which the rule cites for the appeals process (the Legislature's code is served through a vendor platform not captured); a department page tying a § 400-2505 objection to the Office of Appeals and Hearings; the Office of Appeals and Hearings' own page, which as rendered carries no filing address; the department's Office of Long-Term Care page and the Rules for Nursing Homes PDF it posts, both on the 403 host; Part 400, Appendix B (Synopsis of Residents' Bill of Rights), which the Code serves only as a PDF link; a first-party statement, if one exists, addressing return to the facility after a paid leave of absence ends.

Change log

2026-10-06 — Internet Archive captures recorded. Captures requested on 2026-09-06 by an automated capture pass and recorded this date; no human review is claimed for this entry. No quotation, date, finding or link above was changed by it. Each capture below was requested through Save Page Now and then confirmed to play back. Captures added: Office of Long-Term Care Ombudsman, Arkansas Department of Human Services → https://web.archive.org/web/20260906130416/https://arombudsman.dhs.arkansas.gov/; Arkansas Secretary of State, Code of Arkansas Rules → https://web.archive.org/web/20260906130629/https://codeofarrules.arkansas.gov/Rules/Rule?levelType=section&titleID=20&chapterID=38&subChapterID=50&partID=1233&subPartID=7657&sectionID=50037; Arkansas Secretary of State, Code of Arkansas Rules → https://web.archive.org/web/20260906130723/https://codeofarrules.arkansas.gov/Rules/Rule?levelType=section&titleID=20&chapterID=38&subChapterID=50&partID=1233&subPartID=7678&sectionID=50213; Arkansas Secretary of State, Code of Arkansas Rules → https://web.archive.org/web/20260906130818/https://codeofarrules.arkansas.gov/Rules/Rule?levelType=section&titleID=20&chapterID=38&subChapterID=50&partID=1233&subPartID=7678&sectionID=50215.

2026-09-19 — Deepened to a full page: section 01 (the grounds, as Arkansas describes them) and section 02 (the published process, including the notice's required contents, bed-hold and return, and the notice-periods register) are now written, from the two standing packets plus one newly captured supplement. Newly captured: the Department of Human Services' Medical Assistance Program Manual Of Cost Reimbursement Rules For Long Term Care Facilities, Chapter 6 (Instructions for Daily Midnight Census), which states Arkansas Medicaid's only located bed-hold provision — up to five consecutive days of paid hospital leave, conditioned on the facility's occupancy certification, and up to fourteen consecutive days of paid therapeutic home leave — captured in tools/packets/arkansas-packet-medicaid.txt. Transport: humanservices.arkansas.gov returns a bare nginx 403 to curl on this file over both HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2, the same host behavior already recorded on 2026-09-04 for the department's main site; the session's web-fetch tool retrieved the PDF where curl could not, and the capture is marked not re-verifiable by the automated pass, the same status already carried by the File an Appeal supplement. Findings, continuing the numbering below: (7) No pendency statement is in the sources reviewed — § 400-2505, § 400-2507, and § 400-411 are silent on whether a resident remains at the facility while a written objection under § 400-2505(d) is pending; the absence is stated in section 02 rather than assumed either way. (8) No readmission or return provision accompanies the located bed-hold allowance: the cost-reimbursement manual's Chapter 6 states the paid-leave allowance and its census coding only, and the Office of Long-Term Care's Rules for Nursing Homes (20 CAR Part 400, read in full for this row) states none. Capture pending, continuing the 2026-09-04 list: Arkansas Code § 20-10-1005 (the Legislature's code site remains unreached); a department page tying a § 400-2505 objection to the Office of Appeals and Hearings; that office's own filing address; Part 400, Appendix B; and now also a first-party statement, if one exists, addressing return to the facility after a paid leave of absence ends. Recipe: tools/recipes/arkansas.json is unchanged; the new source is a hand supplemental packet rather than a recipe source, because its host defeats every transport the recipe schema encodes. Internet Archive: not yet submitted for the new source. Reviewer: Carrie Schluter, reviewed 2026-09-20. Corrections: hello@fieldassembly.net.

2026-09-04 — Baseline page built from the first Arkansas packets: docket, lede, source map, change log. Not yet captured or written: section 01 (the grounds, as Arkansas describes them) and section 02 (the published process, including the notice's required contents in full, bed-hold and return, and the notice-periods register). Transports: the three Code sections and the ombudsman program site were fetched by curl with a browser user-agent through the capture recipe (tools/recipes/arkansas.json), by tag-stripping the body; the department's File an Appeal page was rendered in the session's browser and its text copied to a supplemental packet, because humanservices.arkansas.gov returns a bare nginx 403 to curl on every path and header set tried and the session fetch tool returns only the site's menus. That one source is a last-resort transport and is marked not re-verifiable. Findings: (1) codeofarrules.arkansas.gov, recorded on 2026-08-30 as failing TLS to curl from both the sandbox and the Mac, answered curl normally on 2026-09-04; the earlier failure is recorded as transient and the Code is captured by recipe. Its section addresses carry the site's own database identifiers, read from its tree-view endpoint. (2) The rule states two notice periods in the same current Part: thirty days at § 400-2505(b) and ten days for a transfer at § 400-411(7)(B). Both are quoted; neither is reconciled here. (3) The rendered text of § 400-2505 heads itself "6 CAR § 400-2505" where the page's title and citation read "20 CAR § 400-2505"; that is the publisher's text as served and is left as found. (4) The rule sends the appeal to the Secretary of the Department of Human Services within seven calendar days and names no office, address or form; the department's File an Appeal page prints the Office of Appeals and Hearings' address and email for the department's administrative hearings generally and does not mention nursing facilities. The hearing row quotes both and states that the connection between them is not stated in the sources reviewed. (5) The ombudsman program's own site prints no telephone number, address or email in its text; the state portal's ombudsman page (portal.arkansas.gov) and the department's Contact DAABHS page, both rendered in the browser, print none for the program either. The row states what the program publishes rather than supplying a number from a third party. (6) The department's Office of Appeals and Hearings page, rendered in the browser, describes the office and its chief and prints no filing address; it was not captured. Capture pending: per the source map. Internet Archive: not yet submitted. Reviewer: Carrie Schluter, reviewed 2026-09-04. Corrections: hello@fieldassembly.net.