Montana

The grounds, as Montana describes them

Montana's own licensing rule for the facilities in this page's scope states no grounds of its own. ARM 37.106.601(1) (Administrative Rules of Montana, Montana Secretary of State, Effective 09/24/2022 - Present, retrieved 2026-09-26) states in full: "A skilled nursing care facility shall comply with the Conditions of Participation for Skilled Nursing Facilities as set forth in 42 CFR subchapter G part 483. An intermediate care facility shall comply with the requirements set forth in 42 CFR subchapter G subpart I. A copy of the cited requirements may be obtained from the Department of Public Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General, 2401 Colonial Drive, P.O. Box 202953, Helena, MT 59620-2953." What 42 CFR 483.15 itself enumerates as grounds is quoted on the federal page; this page does not substitute that text for a Montana statement, because ARM 37.106.601 does not restate it.

Separately, by statute, MCA 50-5-1104(1) (Montana Code Annotated, Montana Legislature, Montana Code Annotated 2025, last amended Sec. 9, Ch. 12, L. 2023, retrieved 2026-09-26) states: "The state adopts by reference for all long-term care facilities the rights for long-term care facility residents applied by the federal government to facilities that provide skilled nursing care or intermediate nursing care and participate in a medicaid or medicare program (42 U.S.C. 1395i-3(a) and 1396r(a), as implemented by regulation)." This is a second, statutory adoption of the same federal standard rather than a state-specific ground of its own. The only transfer-or-discharge-specific right the statute states in its own words is the notice provision quoted in section 02 below, at MCA 50-5-1104(2)(j).

The published process

Requesting the hearing

ARM 37.5.105(1): "Hearings contesting a transfer or discharge of a nursing facility resident by a nursing facility are available to the extent granted in 42 CFR part 431, subpart E and shall be conducted in accordance with ARM 37.5.304, 37.5.305, 37.5.307, 37.5.310, 37.5.311, 37.5.313, 37.5.316, 37.5.322, 37.5.325, 37.5.328, 37.5.331, 37.5.334, and 37.5.337." ARM 37.5.105(1)(a) states plainly that the department itself is not a party to such a hearing: "Although the department is required by federal law to provide a hearing forum for hearings contesting a transfer or discharge of a nursing facility resident by a nursing facility, the department is not a party to the hearing. The contested action is the action of a nursing facility rather than the department. In such cases, relief may not be granted against the department." The filing deadline and address sit inside a rule of general application to many kinds of department "adverse action" hearings, not one written for nursing-facility residents alone: ARM 37.5.307(5) states "A hearing request from a claimant must be received in writing within 30 days of the date of mailing of notice of the adverse action regarding:" and (5)(b) names "a nursing facility's transfer or discharge of a nursing facility resident;" among the four kinds of action so covered. ARM 37.5.307(6): "Except for fair hearing requests on a substantiated report, hearing requests must be mailed or delivered to the Office of Fair Hearings, P.O. Box 202953, Helena, MT 59620-2953." No first-party statement of a pendency right — that a resident stays in place while a timely appeal is pending — was found in the sources reviewed (searched: MCA 50-5-1104, ARM 37.5.105, ARM 37.5.307, and the ombudsman program's own page); not stated in the sources reviewed.

The notice's required contents

MCA 50-5-1104(2)(j), the only Montana source found stating what a transfer-or-discharge notice itself must contain, states it as a notice period rather than an itemized-contents list: "In case of involuntary transfer or discharge, a resident has the right to reasonable advance notice to ensure an orderly transfer or discharge. Reasonable advance notice requires at least 21 days' written notification of any interfacility transfer or discharge except in cases of emergency or for medical reasons documented in the resident's medical record by the attending physician." No further first-party statement of required notice contents — such as a statement of appeal rights, the ombudsman's contact, or the reason for the move — was found in the sources reviewed (searched: MCA 50-5-1104, ARM 37.106.601, ARM 37.5.105, and ARM 37.5.307); not stated in the sources reviewed.

Bed-hold and return

ARM 37.40.338(1) (Administrative Rules of Montana, Montana Secretary of State, Effective 02/11/2000 - Present, retrieved 2026-09-26) states: "Except as provided in (6) through (9) for therapeutic home visits, payment will be made to a provider for holding a bed for a resident only if:" the facility "is full and has a current waiting list of potential residents during each such bed day claimed for reimbursement", the resident "is temporarily receiving medical services outside the facility, except in another nursing facility, and is expected to return to the provider", holding the bed costs less than the alternative, and "the provider has received written approval from the department's senior and long term care division". The rule states no outer day limit on a hospital-absence bed-hold itself; payment continues only while those conditions are met, per ARM 37.40.338(5): "Where the conditions of (1) through (4) are met, providers are required to hold a bed and may not fill the bed until these conditions are no longer met." A different, explicit day limit applies to a different kind of absence: ARM 37.40.338(6)(c) caps a therapeutic home visit at "no more than 72 consecutive hours per absence, unless the department determines that a longer absence is medically appropriate and has authorized the longer absence in advance of the absence." Separately, (8) states "No more than 24 days per resident in each rate year (July 1 through June 30) will be allowed for therapeutic home visits." No first-party statement of a resident's right to return or be readmitted after a hospital stay or bed-hold — as distinct from the provider's own Medicaid reimbursement conditions quoted above — was found in the sources reviewed (searched: MCA 50-5-1104, ARM 37.106.601, ARM 37.40.338, and the ombudsman program's own page); 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 Montana'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.

21 days' advance notice — MCA 50-5-1104(2)(j), quoted in full above: "Reasonable advance notice requires at least 21 days' written notification of any interfacility transfer or discharge except in cases of emergency or for medical reasons documented in the resident's medical record by the attending physician." The Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program's own page states the same right differently, as "at least 30 days' written notice of moves outside the facility" — a longer figure on the program's plain-language page than the statute's own 21 days; both are quoted as published and not reconciled.

30 days to request the hearing — ARM 37.5.307(5) and (5)(b), quoted in full above: a hearing request concerning "a nursing facility's transfer or discharge of a nursing facility resident" "must be received in writing within 30 days of the date of mailing of notice of the adverse action".

72 hours per therapeutic home visit — ARM 37.40.338(6)(c), quoted in full above: the resident must be "absent from the provider's facility for no more than 72 consecutive hours per absence, unless the department determines that a longer absence is medically appropriate and has authorized the longer absence in advance of the absence."

24 days per rate year for therapeutic home visits — ARM 37.40.338(8): "No more than 24 days per resident in each rate year (July 1 through June 30) will be allowed for therapeutic home visits."

90 days to request approval of a bed-hold — ARM 37.40.338(4): a provider's request for the department's written approval of bed-hold days "must be submitted to the department's senior and long term care division on the form provided by the department within 90 days after the first day of the requested bed hold period."

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

Source map

Captured: all six, in tools/packets/montana-packet.txt. Pending: any first-party statement of a pendency right during a timely-filed appeal, any first-party statement of the notice's other required contents beyond the notice period itself, and any first-party statement of a resident's right to return or be readmitted after a hospital stay distinct from the Medicaid reimbursement conditions ARM 37.40.338 states.

Change log

2026-10-19 — Internet Archive captures recorded. Captures requested this date by an automated capture pass; 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: Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services → https://web.archive.org/web/20261019122131/https://dphhs.mt.gov/sltc/aging/longtermcareombudsman/; Montana Code Annotated, Montana Legislature → https://web.archive.org/web/20261019122232/https://leg.mt.gov/bills/mca/title_0500/chapter_0050/part_0110/section_0040/0500-0050-0110-0040.html; Administrative Rules of Montana, Montana Secretary of State → https://web.archive.org/web/20261019122455/https://rules.mt.gov/browse/collections/aec52c46-128e-4279-9068-8af5d5432d74/policies/71e66051-684a-4882-b57b-5ff6c1491f68; Administrative Rules of Montana, Montana Secretary of State → https://web.archive.org/web/20261019122657/https://rules.mt.gov/browse/collections/aec52c46-128e-4279-9068-8af5d5432d74/policies/8d6002f2-7e61-46b9-a8d1-d2915232080b; Administrative Rules of Montana, Montana Secretary of State → https://web.archive.org/web/20261019122854/https://rules.mt.gov/browse/collections/aec52c46-128e-4279-9068-8af5d5432d74/policies/adebcd91-e84e-42fa-a58a-711b9e4e9514; Administrative Rules of Montana, Montana Secretary of State → https://web.archive.org/web/20261019123027/https://rules.mt.gov/browse/collections/aec52c46-128e-4279-9068-8af5d5432d74/policies/cad14ad9-fc5b-4382-9f22-9659b92adef9.

2026-09-26 — Deepened to a full page. Newly captured: ARM 37.40.338, Bed Hold Payments (added as source 6 of tools/recipes/montana.json; standing packet recaptured, digest a5a560fac077), located via rules.mt.gov's own search for "bed hold" while resolving the 2026-09-03 entry's pending item. Transport: same rules.mt.gov client-rendered platform as sources 2-4, read with the built-in browser's get_page_text and supplied to capture.py with extractor none, verified byte-identical across two independent navigations. Sources 2, 3 and 4 were re-supplied the same way this pass and reproduce the standing text unchanged; sources 1 and 5 were recaptured through the standing recipe's plain-curl transport and reproduce byte-for-byte. Findings, continuing the numbering of the 2026-09-03 entry: (5) ARM 37.40.338 states no outer day limit on a hospital-absence bed-hold — payment continues only while the facility is full with a waiting list and the department has given written approval — unlike the fixed day counts other states publish; it states a separate, explicit cap only for a different kind of absence, a therapeutic home visit (72 consecutive hours per absence, 24 days per rate year). (6) No first-party statement of a pendency right (that a resident stays in place while a timely appeal is pending) or of the notice's required contents beyond the 21-day period itself was found in the sources reviewed; both are recorded as absences rather than gaps filled from another state or the federal floor. (7) No first-party statement of a resident's right to return or be readmitted after a hospital stay, distinct from the provider's own Medicaid reimbursement conditions, was found in the sources reviewed. Capture-pending: per the source map. Internet Archive: not yet submitted. Reviewer: Carrie Schluter, reviewed 2026-09-27. Corrections: hello@fieldassembly.net.

2026-09-03 — Baseline page built from the first Montana packet: docket, lede, source map, change log. Not yet captured or written: section 01 (the grounds, as Montana 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: MCA 50-5-1104 was retrieved by curl with a browser user-agent from leg.mt.gov; the three Administrative Rules of Montana citations sit behind rules.mt.gov, a client-side "Esper" policy-library application that returns only a JavaScript shell to curl and to the session fetch tool — each was located through the site's own search (confirmed via its underlying API endpoint, reached only from within the rendered page) and read in a rendered browser tab, a last-resort transport per PROVENANCE.md and not independently re-verifiable by the automated pass; the ombudsman program page was retrieved by ordinary curl. Findings: (1) Montana's own licensing rule for skilled nursing and skilled/intermediate care facilities, ARM 37.106.601, states no state-specific grounds or notice period at all — it requires compliance with the federal Conditions of Participation, 42 CFR part 483, naming only a mailing address where a copy of the federal requirements may be obtained; this is the first state built in this index whose licensing rule adopts the federal standard wholesale rather than restating any part of it. (2) Montana's own statute, MCA 50-5-1104(2)(j), states a 21-day advance-notice right for involuntary transfer or discharge, while the state long-term care ombudsman program's own page states the same right as "at least 30 days' written notice" — a shorter, state-specific figure in the codified statute against a longer figure on the ombudsman program's own plain-language page; both are quoted as published and not reconciled. (3) The fair-hearing rule for nursing-facility transfer and discharge disputes, ARM 37.5.105, states plainly that the department itself is not a party to such a hearing: "The contested action is the action of a nursing facility rather than the department." — and that relief may not be granted against the department — the hearing forum is procedural machinery the state provides, not a proceeding against the state. (4) The hearing-request deadline and mailing address for a nursing facility resident's transfer-or-discharge appeal, found in ARM 37.5.307(5)(b) and (6), sit inside a rule of general application to many kinds of DPHHS "adverse action" hearings, not a rule written for nursing-facility residents alone; the resident-specific paragraph is quoted precisely as it appears within that general rule. Capture pending: per the source map. Internet Archive: not yet submitted. Reviewer: Carrie Schluter, reviewed 2026-09-03. Corrections: hello@fieldassembly.net.