New York

The grounds, as New York describes them

10 NYCRR 415.3(i) opens by defining its own scope (regs.health.ny.gov, Effective Date 02/24/2022, retrieved 2026-09-04): "Transfer and discharge shall include movement of a resident to a bed outside of the certified facility whether that bed is in the same physical plant or not. Transfer and discharge shall not refer to movement of a resident to a bed within the same certified facility, and does not include transfer or discharge made in compliance with a request by the resident, the resident's legal representative or health care agent, as evidenced by a signed and dated written statement, or those that occur due to incarceration of the resident."

415.3(i)(1)(i)(a): "The resident may be transferred only when the interdisciplinary care team, in consultation with the resident or the resident's designated representative, determines that":

"the transfer or discharge is necessary for the resident's welfare and the resident's needs cannot be met after reasonable attempts at accommodation in the facility;"

"the transfer or discharge is appropriate because the resident's health has improved sufficiently so the resident no longer needs the services provided by the facility;"

"the safety of individuals in the facility is endangered; or"

"The health of individuals in the facility is endangered;"

Two further grounds stand outside that list. 415.3(i)(1)(i)(b): "Transfer and discharge shall also be permissible when the resident has failed, after reasonable and appropriate notice, to pay for (or to have paid under Medicare, Medicaid or third party insurance) a stay at the facility. For a resident who becomes eligible for Medicaid after admission to a facility, the facility may charge a resident only allowable charges under Medicaid. Such transfer or discharge shall be permissible only if a charge is not in dispute, no appeal of a denial of benefits is pending, or funds for payment are actually available and the resident refuses to cooperate with the facility in obtaining the funds." And 415.3(i)(1)(i)(c): "Transfer or discharge shall also be permissible when the facility discontinues operation and has received approval of its plan of closure in accordance with subdivision (i) of Section 401.3 of this Subchapter."

Before any of this, the facility's underlying duty is stated at 415.3(i)(1)(i): "permit each resident to remain in the facility, and not transfer or discharge the resident from the facility unless such transfer or discharge is made in recognition of the resident's rights to receive considerate and respectful care, to receive necessary care and services, and to participate in the development of the comprehensive care plan and in recognition of the rights of other residents in the facility."

The published process

Requesting the hearing

415.3(i)(2): "The department shall grant an opportunity for a hearing to any resident who requests it because he or she believes the facility has erroneously determined that he or she must be transferred or discharged in accordance with the following:" the resident has the right to "request a hearing to appeal the transfer or discharge notice at any time within 60 days from the date the notice of transfer or discharge is received by the resident;" to "remain in the facility pending an appeal determination if the appeal request is made within 15 days of the date of receipt of the transfer or discharge notice;" to "a post-transfer/discharge appeal determination if the resident did not request an appeal determination within 15 days of the date of receipt of the transfer or discharge notice;" to "return to the facility to the first available semi-private bed if the resident wins the appeal, prior to admitting any other person to the facility;" and to "represent him or herself, or use legal counsel, a relative, a friend or other spokesman."

The regulation's own hearing procedure, at 415.3(i)(2)(iii), states: "All hearings must be conducted in accordance with Article 3 of the State Administrative Procedure Act, and in accordance with the following:" "the presiding officer shall have the power to obtain medical assessments and psychosocial consultations, and the authority to issue subpoenas;" "the nursing home shall have the burden of proof that the discharge or transfer is/was necessary and the discharge plan appropriate;" "an administrative hearing must be scheduled within 90 days from the date of the request for a hearing on appeal;" and "the parties must be notified in writing of the decision and provided information on the right to seek review of the decision, if review is available."

The practical filing route the department publishes, on its appeal page, runs by "Phone: Call the NYSDOH Nursing Home Complaint and Discharge Appeal Hotline at 1-888-201-4563", by completing and submitting "the online Nursing Home Discharge Appeal Form", by mail to "NYS DOH Centralized Complaint Intake Program" at "875 Central Ave," "Albany, NY 12206", by fax to "518-408-1157", or by email to nhintake@health.ny.gov.

The regulation's own pendency rule is narrower than either consumer page states it. The rights page says only that the resident may "remain in the facility pending the appeal determination if the request for an appeal is filed with the Department prior to you being discharged from the facility." The department's own Transfer/Discharge Notice template says the same thing in its own words: "If a request for an appeal is filed with NYSDOH prior to the resident's transfer/discharge from the facility, the resident may remain in the facility (excluding cases of transfer/discharge due to imminent danger) pending an appeal hearing decision." Neither page states a deadline for filing that request. The regulation does: the stay applies only "if the appeal request is made within 15 days of the date of receipt of the transfer or discharge notice" (415.3(i)(2)(i)(b)), quoted above — a resident who waits past 15 days but still files before the 30-day notice period runs out would, on the regulation's own words, no longer be entitled to remain pending the hearing, a distinction neither consumer page conveys. All three are quoted from their own publisher; none is reconciled with another here. The template adds a consequence stated nowhere else in the sources reviewed: "It should be noted that any resident choosing to remain at a facility pending appeal may be liable for the cost to stay at the facility pending the appeal if the resident loses their appeal."

The notice's required contents

415.3(i)(1)(v) states the facility must "include in the written notice specified in subparagraph (iii) of this paragraph the following:" "The reason for transfer or discharge;" "The specific regulations that support, or the change in Federal or State law that requires, the action;" "The effective date of transfer or discharge;" "The location to which the resident will be transferred or discharged;" "a statement that the resident has the right to appeal the action to the State Department of Health, which includes:" "an explanation of the individual's right to request an evidentiary hearing appealing the decision;" "the method by which an appeal may be obtained;" "in cases of an action based on a change in law, an explanation of the circumstances under which an appeal will be granted;" "an explanation that the resident may remain in the facility (except in cases of imminent danger) pending the appeal decision if the request for an appeal is made within 15 days of the date the resident received the notice of transfer/discharge;" "in cases of residents discharged/transferred due to imminent danger, a statement that the resident may return to the first available bed if he or she prevails at the hearing on appeal;" and "a statement that the resident may represent him or herself or use legal counsel, a relative, a friend, or other spokesman." The notice must also carry "the name, address and telephone number of the State long term care ombudsman;" and, for two named populations, the contact for the state's protection-and-advocacy agency: "for nursing facility residents with developmental disabilities, the mailing address and telephone number of the agency responsible for the protection and advocacy of developmentally disabled individuals established under Part C of the Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act;" and "for nursing facility residents who are mentally ill, the mailing address and telephone number of the agency responsible for the protection and advocacy of mentally ill individuals established under the Protection and Advocacy for Mentally Ill Individuals Act".

The department's own fillable Transfer/Discharge Notice template puts this into practice: it cites "10 NYCRR § 415.3 and 42 CFR § 483.15" on its face, restates the grounds and the appeal-rights text quoted above, and names the two required advocacy contacts. Where the rights page and the regulation both say a prevailing resident returns to the "first available" bed, the template says the resident "has the right to return to the next available semiprivate bed in the facility if the resident prevails/wins at the hearing on appeal" — quoted as published; not reconciled. For the mental-illness/developmental-disability contact, the template names Disability Rights New York, giving "Address: 279 Troy Road, Suite 9, PMB 236, Rensselaer, NY 12144", "Phone: 518-432-7861", "Toll Free: 1-800-993-8982", and an email of Mail@DRNY.org.

Bed-hold and return

The regulation states the facility's own duty at 415.3(i)(3): "The facility shall establish and implement a bed-hold policy and a readmission policy that reflect at least the following:" at admission and again at transfer, the facility must specify "the duration of the bed-hold policy during which the resident is permitted to return and resume residence in the facility" and "the facility's policies regarding bed-hold periods"; at the time of a transfer for hospitalization or therapeutic leave, the facility must give written notice "which specifies the duration of the bed-hold policy"; and a resident "whose hospitalization or therapeutic leave exceeds the bed hold period is readmitted to the facility immediately upon the first availability of a bed in a semi-private room" if the resident "requires the services provided by the facility" and "is eligible for Medicaid nursing home services." A separate readmission duty applies to a resident who was given no bed-hold at all: 415.3(i)(3)(iv) requires readmission on the same terms for "a resident who has resided in the nursing home for 30 days or more and who has been hospitalized or who has been transferred or discharged on therapeutic leave without being given a bed-hold".

The regulation does not itself state a number of days. The Medicaid rule does. 18 NYCRR 505.9(d)(6) (regs.health.ny.gov, Effective Date 05/29/2019, retrieved 2026-09-04): "Reserving a recipient's bed. The institution must reserve a recipient's bed when the recipient is hospitalized and expected to return to the institution in 15 or fewer days, subject to the limitations set forth in this paragraph." The reservation can be extended: "if an extension will permit the recipient to return to the institution within 20 days of his or her admission to the hospital, the bed reservation must be extended up to 5 days beyond the 15-day limit". Where a bed is not reserved, "the recipient must be given priority in readmission to the institution over persons referred to the institution for their first admissions." That duty is stated for hospitalization; a parallel duty for a leave of absence carries no comparable age or diagnosis limit and states that: "A medical institution must reserve a recipient's bed when his or her plan of care provides for leaves of absence."

One qualification in the Medicaid rule is worth stating precisely rather than folding into a single number. The hospitalization bed-reservation duty at 505.9(d)(6) is not stated for every NF resident: "NFs must, as a condition of participation in the MA program, make, extend and terminate bed reservations for MA recipients who are either under 21 years of age, or receiving hospice services within the facility and temporarily absent from such institutions for hospitalization as provided in subparagraphs (i) through (iv) of this paragraph." Whether or how this qualification interacts with the regulation's own facility-level "bed-hold policy" duty at 415.3(i)(3), which is not stated as limited to those two groups, is not addressed by any source reviewed; both are quoted from their own publisher and neither is reconciled with the other here.

The three rows above hoist the questions a facility's counsel answers in the first fifteen minutes. They are quotations from New York'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' advance notice — 415.3(i)(1)(iv): the facility must "provide the notice of transfer or discharge required under subparagraph (iii) of this paragraph at least 30 days before the resident is transferred or discharged", unless one of six stated circumstances applies, in which case "notice shall be given as soon as practicable before transfer or discharge, but no later than the date on which a determination was made to transfer or discharge the resident".

Sixty days to request the hearing — 415.3(i)(2)(i)(a), quoted in full above.

Fifteen days for the stay while the hearing is pending — 415.3(i)(2)(i)(b), quoted in full above; the two consumer pages in sources 1 and 6 do not state this figure, as section 02 records.

Ninety days to the hearing — 415.3(i)(2)(iii)(c): "an administrative hearing must be scheduled within 90 days from the date of the request for a hearing on appeal".

Sixty days' notice of an impending facility closure — the rights page: the facility must "provide written notification to you, your authorized representative, the Department of Health, and the NYS Long Term Care Ombudsman of an impending closure at least sixty (60) days prior to the date of the facilities anticipated closure."

Fifteen or fewer days, extendable to twenty — 18 NYCRR 505.9(d)(6)(i) and (iii)(a), quoted in full above, for the population 505.9(d)(6) itself defines.

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/new-york-packet.txt. Not captured: the ten other-language editions of the discharge notice template (Spanish, Chinese, Haitian Creole, Italian, Korean, Russian, Yiddish, Polish, Bengali, Arabic) — the English edition already documents the required notice contents, and no Spanish page is built from this one yet, per the project's published-translations-only convention; the department's online Nursing Home Complaint form (a web form rather than a document) and the standalone DOH-5022 complaint-form PDF the appeal page and the template both link, neither of which states anything the sources above do not already carry; and a street address for the hearing-request filing route itself, beyond the Centralized Complaint Intake Program's mailing address, which is not stated in the sources reviewed.

Change log

2026-10-08 — Source review; one source rewritten. All six sources were re-captured through tools/recipes/new-york.json, the first run since the docx extractor became usable in this repository's environment (the 2026-09-24 nightly had failed on it). Five match their standing captures in every quoted span; the two health-department consumer pages shed site chrome (tag-manager and search-form markup, footer link lists) and nothing else. Source 3, the Office for the Aging's Long Term Care Ombudsman Program page, has been rewritten. Findings: (13) The sentence this page quoted in the docket, that the Office of the State Long Term Care Ombudsman is "an independent office administratively housed in the New York State Office for the Aging," is no longer on the page; the "Support Services" block that carried it (Advocacy, Service, Dedication) is gone. The docket now quotes the current page and records the superseded sentence with its date. (14) The telephone line now prints "Call 1-(855)-582-6769 to reach your Ombudsman." where it printed "Call 1 (855) 582-6769"; the same number, quoted as currently published. (15) The contact line now reads "Reach out to the New York State Ombudsman Claudette Royal." where it read "Contact Claudette Royal, the New York State Ombudsman."; the same name, quoted as currently published. The 2026-09-04 capture is retained in tools/packets/history/new-york/ beside the new one. Capture pending: per the source map. Internet Archive: not yet submitted. Reviewer: Carrie Schluter, reviewed 2026-10-08. Corrections: hello@fieldassembly.net.

2026-09-04 — Deepened from the 2026-08-30 baseline to a full page: section 01 (the grounds, as New York describes them) and section 02 (the published process, including the notice's required contents, bed-hold and return, and the notice-periods register) are newly written. Three sources are new, captured through tools/recipes/new-york.json (python3 tools/capture.py new-york): 10 NYCRR 415.3 and 18 NYCRR 505.9, both found at regs.health.ny.gov (the Department of Health's own Title 10/18 NYCRR portal, "New York Codes, Rules and Regulations" per its own page title), and the department's English-language Transfer/Discharge Notice template (DOCX). The original three sources are re-captured by the same recipe rather than the session's HTTP fetch tool the 2026-08-30 packet used for source 3. Findings: (7) 10 NYCRR 415.3, recorded capture-pending at baseline because "the department's regulation portal returned HTTP 404 to the section path tried," is now captured; the 404 was a wrong URL guess rather than a fact about the regulation's availability, and the section was found by following regs.health.ny.gov's own volume/chapter/subchapter/article/part navigation (Title 10, Volume C, Chapter V, the Medical Facilities Minimum Standards subchapter, Article 3, Part 415) rather than by guessing a path. The host returns HTTP 403 to curl with no user-agent and with a curl user-agent, and HTTP 200 to a browser user-agent, the same pattern CLAUDE.md already records for other hosts. (8) 18 NYCRR 505.9, recorded capture-pending at baseline as "any first-party statement of the Medicaid bed-hold period," is now captured from the same portal's Title 18 side (Volume C, the Medical Care subchapter, Article 3, Part 505). Its subdivision (d), "Reserved Bed Days," states the day-count neither consumer page states: a nursing facility must reserve a hospitalized Medicaid recipient's bed when the recipient is expected to return "in 15 or fewer days" (505.9(d)(6)(i)), extendable up to 20 days total (505.9(d)(6)(iii)(a)). That duty, at 505.9(d)(6), is stated only for NF residents "who are either under 21 years of age, or receiving hospice services within the facility" when hospitalized; a parallel leave-of-absence duty at 505.9(d)(7) carries no comparable limit. Both are quoted from their own publisher and neither is reconciled with the regulation's own facility-level bed-hold-policy duty at 415.3(i)(3), which states no such limit; section 02 states this rather than resolving it. (9) The regulation's own pendency rule, 415.3(i)(2)(i)(b), requires an appeal request "within 15 days of the date of receipt of the transfer or discharge notice" for the resident to remain in the facility pending the hearing — a figure neither the rights page nor the department's own notice template states; both instead describe the right only as running until the resident "is discharged" or "transfer/discharge from the facility," with no deadline of their own. All three are quoted from their own publisher; none is reconciled with another. (10) The English-language Transfer/Discharge Notice template, recorded capture-pending at baseline, is now captured. It states a consequence found nowhere else in the sources reviewed — a resident remaining pending appeal "may be liable for the cost to stay at the facility pending the appeal if the resident loses their appeal" — and it states the post-appeal return right as "the next available semiprivate bed" where the rights page and the regulation both say "first available"; quoted as published, not reconciled. It also carries the first captured first-party statement of the Disability Rights New York contact the regulation requires a facility to name for residents with mental illness or developmental disabilities. (11) The regulation's own hearing procedure at 415.3(i)(2)(iii) — burden of proof on the facility, subpoena power for the presiding officer, and a hearing "scheduled within 90 days from the date of the request for a hearing on appeal" — is stated by neither consumer page and is newly added to the notice-periods register. (12) 415.3(i)'s own opening paragraph excludes a resident-requested move from the definition of "transfer and discharge" itself, evidenced by "a signed and dated written statement," and separately excludes a move "due to incarceration of the resident" — narrower, and differently placed, than the rights page's parallel exception, which lists a resident's own request as one of seven notice-timing circumstances rather than as part of the definition; quoted from their own publisher, not reconciled. Capture pending: per the source map. Internet Archive: not yet submitted. Reviewer: Carrie Schluter, reviewed 2026-09-04. Corrections: hello@fieldassembly.net.

2026-08-30 — Baseline page built from the first New York packet: docket, lede, source map, change log. Not yet captured or written: section 01 (the grounds, as New York 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). Findings: (1) The two health-department sources were captured by curl with a browser user-agent; the Office for the Aging's site returns HTTP 403 to curl and was captured through the session's fetch tool. (2) The regulation the pages implement, 10 NYCRR 415.3, is capture-pending: the department's regulation portal returned HTTP 404 to the section path tried, so what this page carries is the department's own restatement on its consumer pages rather than the regulatory text. (3) The department's two consumer pages carry different revision dates — April 2022 for the rights page, July 2026 for the appeal page — and both are quoted with their own dates rather than merged. (4) The rights page states the facility's duty to give bed-hold notice and to readmit "immediately to the first available bed in a semi-private room at the facility" in the stated circumstances, but states no number of days for the bed-hold period itself; the Medicaid bed-hold period is capture-pending and the number is not supplied from any other source. (5) The department publishes a discharge notice template in eleven languages; it is linked in the source map's underlying capture and is capture-pending as a document, and no Spanish page is built from it yet. (6) The appeal page states the hotline, the online forms, a postal address, a fax number and an email address, but no filing office street address other than the Centralized Complaint Intake Program's; the route is reproduced as published. Capture pending: per the source map. Internet Archive: not yet submitted. Reviewer: Carrie Schluter, reviewed 2026-08-30. Corrections: hello@fieldassembly.net.