South Carolina

The grounds, as South Carolina describes them

S.C. Code § 44-81-40(D), part of the Bill of Rights for Residents of Long-Term Care Facilities (South Carolina Code of Laws, Title 44 Chapter 81, retrieved 2026-09-18), states the grounds and the notice period in the same sentence: "A resident may be transferred or discharged only for medical reasons, for the welfare of the resident or for the welfare of other residents of the facility, or for nonpayment and must be given written notice of not less than thirty days, except that when the health, safety, or welfare of other residents of the facility would be endangered by the thirty-day notice requirement, the time for giving notice must be that which is practicable under the circumstances." Four grounds by the sentence's own commas: medical reasons; the resident's welfare; the welfare of other residents; nonpayment. No further regulation enumerating or elaborating them was captured; the nursing home licensing regulation R.60-17 was searched in the 2026-08-30 pass and carries none. The same subsection adds one further notice obligation, for a different kind of move: "Each resident must be given written notice before the resident's room or roommate in the facility is changed."

The published process

Requesting the hearing

No captured South Carolina statute or regulation creates a hearing specific to an involuntary transfer or discharge; the Bill of Rights routes enforcement through the facility's own grievance procedure, § 44-81-60: "Each facility shall establish grievance procedures to be exercised by or on behalf of the resident to enforce the rights provided by this act. The department shall review and approve these grievance procedures annually. This act is enforced by the department." What does exist, and was not previously captured, is the Department of Health and Human Services' general Medicaid fair-hearing forum. Its "When can I appeal?" list names this situation directly: "You receive notice that the nursing home where you reside plans to discharge or transfer you against your wishes." is one of the stated occasions for an appeal (File an Appeal, SCDHHS Office of Appeals and Hearings, retrieved 2026-09-18).

Filing route, stated for this category of appeal ("For other appeals" — the department's Eligibility Appeals route is a separate, narrower category for a denial of an initial application): "please state what and why you are appealing (why you think the decision made or action taken is wrong). Please include a copy of the notice or denial you received with your letter and be sure to include complete contact information for you and your representative (if you have one). Please submit the appeal one of the following ways:" — "Submit your appeal online." — "Fax to (803) 255-8206" — mail to "Office of Appeals and Hearings" "PO Box 8206" "Columbia, SC 29202" — or "Email your appeal to appeals@scdhhs.gov". General guidance on timing: "You should carefully read the notice or denial you receive. It will contain instructions on how long you have to appeal. Some notices will give you thirty (30) days from the date of the notice. Other notices give you thirty (30) days from the day you receive the notice." The department states no single, universal deadline for this category of appeal separate from what the individual notice itself states.

On continuing in place, the department states a request-based provision rather than an automatic stay: "New services cannot be started. However, you may request continued benefits or services if you do so within ten days (10) of the date on the notice. Your services or benefits will continue during the appeal process. Any disputed benefits or services you receive during the appeal process may have to be paid back if the hearing officer rules the agency, MCO, or other party making the decision was correct." The hearing itself: "A fair hearing is an in-person proceeding conducted by a hearing officer of the Office of Appeals and Hearings." held, ordinarily, at "Jefferson Square, 1801 Main Street, Columbia, SC 29201", though "hearings may be scheduled for county eligibility or Community Long Term Care (CLTC) offices or other locations." On timing: "Ordinarily, member appeals should be concluded within 90 days of filing." A further appeal follows: "You may appeal to the Administrative Law Court. Directions on how to contact and begin an appeal to the ALC are contained within the cover letter sent with the hearing officer's order. Please be aware that appeals must be filed with the ALC within thirty (30) days of the receipt of the hearing officer's order." The Office of Appeals and Hearings itself: "(803)898-2600 or (800)763-9087."

The notice's required contents

No captured South Carolina statute or regulation states what a facility's transfer or discharge notice must contain. § 44-81-40(D) states only the notice period, quoted above, and § 44-81-40(A) states a separate, general obligation about residents' rights notices rather than transfer notices: "Each resident or the resident's representative must be given by the facility a written and oral explanation of the rights, grievance procedures, and enforcement provisions of this chapter before or at the time of admission to a long-term care facility." R.60-17 was searched in the 2026-08-30 pass and carries no notice-contents provision; the department's appeals materials, read in this pass, tell a resident to act on whatever the notice states ("You should carefully read the notice or denial you receive. It will contain instructions on how to appeal.") without stating what the nursing home's notice itself is required to say. That absence is stated rather than filled from another state or from the federal page.

Bed-hold and return

§ 44-81-40(B)(2) ties bed-hold to the facility's own refund policy rather than stating a day count directly: "the facility's refund policy which must be adopted by each facility and which must be based upon the actual number of days a resident was in the facility and any reasonable number of bed-hold days, except when the provisions of subsection (E) apply." The statute requires a policy and requires it to be reasonable; it does not itself state how many bed-hold days are reasonable, and no further first-party South Carolina source stating a specific number was found. Searched in this pass and carrying no bed-hold provision: the Nursing Facility Services Provider Manual, SCDHHS's own current provider billing manual (retrieved and read in full 2026-09-18, no mention of a reserved-bed, bed-hold, or leave-of-absence policy anywhere in the document); a general search for a published SCDHHS Medicaid bed-hold or reserved-bed policy also returned nothing first-party. That absence is stated rather than filled from another state or from the federal page. (Subsection (E), which sets a fourteen-day notice and a charge provision for a resident's voluntary relocation from a community residential care facility, is a different facility type and a different, resident-initiated scenario from the involuntary transfer or discharge this page covers, and is not quoted here.)

The three rows above hoist the questions a facility's counsel answers in the first fifteen minutes. They are quotations from South Carolina'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' notice of transfer or discharge, with a practicability exception — § 44-81-40(D): "written notice of not less than thirty days, except that when the health, safety, or welfare of other residents of the facility would be endangered by the thirty-day notice requirement, the time for giving notice must be that which is practicable under the circumstances."

Ten days to request continued benefits or services during an appeal — SCDHHS: "you may request continued benefits or services if you do so within ten days (10) of the date on the notice."

Ninety days, ordinarily, for a member appeal to conclude — SCDHHS: "Ordinarily, member appeals should be concluded within 90 days of filing."

Thirty days to appeal the hearing officer's order to the Administrative Law Court — SCDHHS: "appeals must be filed with the ALC within thirty (30) days of the receipt of the hearing officer's order."

No single stated deadline to first request the fair hearing itself — the department directs a resident to the individual notice: "Some notices will give you thirty (30) days from the date of the notice. Other notices give you thirty (30) days from the day you receive the notice."

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

Source map

Captured: all three, in tools/packets/south-carolina-packet.txt (recipe tools/recipes/south-carolina.json, digest da788e39c404). Pending: a first-party statement of a specific bed-hold day count (the statute requires only a "reasonable" facility-set policy), and any further detail on what a transfer or discharge notice must itself contain — per the packet's pending list. Read and found to carry neither, without a packet entry of its own because nothing on the page quotes it: SCDHHS's Nursing Facility Services Provider Manual (https://provider.scdhhs.gov/internet/pdf/manuals/Nursing/CCR.pdf, retrieved 2026-09-18).

Change log

2026-09-18 — Deepened to a full page. Recaptured the existing recipe (tools/recipes/south-carolina.json): sources 1 and 2 reproduce byte-for-byte against the standing packet, with only the retrieval date changing. Added source 3, the South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services' "File an Appeal" page, captured by curl; the recipe now digests da788e39c404 and the packet was rebuilt and retained (retain-packet.py, result: rebuild). Finding (7), and the most consequential of this pass: the department's own appeals materials name a nursing-home discharge or transfer notice directly as one of the stated occasions for a Medicaid fair hearing before its Office of Appeals and Hearings — a first-party hearing route this page did not previously carry. The docket's hearing-office row is updated accordingly; this is a fact section 02 established that the docket did not previously carry, per the calling routine's docket-update rule. The route is South Carolina's general Medicaid fair-hearing apparatus, not one built specifically for this situation, and its own guidance on the filing deadline points back to the individual notice rather than stating one deadline for this category — both stated on the page rather than smoothed over. Wrote section 01 (the grounds, from § 44-81-40(D), the same sentence the docket already quoted) and section 02 (requesting the hearing from the newly captured source; the notice's required contents, which the reviewed sources still do not state, so that absence stands; and bed-hold and return, from § 44-81-40(B)(2), which was in the standing packet from 2026-08-30 but had not yet been written into a page section). Finding (8): § 44-81-40(B)(2) ties a facility's refund policy to "any reasonable number of bed-hold days" without itself stating a number; searched for that number in this pass and found to state none: SCDHHS's Nursing Facility Services Provider Manual (read in full, no reserved-bed or bed-hold provision anywhere in the document) and a general search for a published SCDHHS bed-hold policy. Finding (9): § 44-81-40(E), a fourteen-day voluntary-relocation notice for a community residential care facility resident, sits in the same subsection as the grounds sentence but concerns a different facility type and a resident-initiated move rather than the involuntary transfer or discharge this page covers; it is noted rather than quoted as evidence for this page's rows. Capture pending: per the source map above. Internet Archive: not yet submitted for this pass. Reviewer: Carrie Schluter, reviewed 2026-09-18. Corrections: hello@fieldassembly.net.

2026-08-30 — Baseline page built from the first South Carolina packet: docket, lede, source map, change log. Not yet captured or written: section 01 (the grounds, as South Carolina describes them) and section 02 (the published process, including the notice's required contents, bed-hold and return, and the notice-periods register). Findings: (1) No captured South Carolina source states where a resident appeals an involuntary transfer or discharge, by when, or on what form. The Bill of Rights provides for facility grievance procedures reviewed and approved annually by the department, and states that the act is enforced by the department; it establishes no resident hearing. The hearing row states that absence rather than filling it, and nothing is borrowed from federal law. (2) The nursing home licensing regulation R.60-17 was captured and searched for a transfer or discharge appeal and carries none; it is therefore not in this packet, and the search is recorded here so a later session need not repeat it. (3) South Carolina states its grounds and its notice period in a single sentence, and states no required contents for the notice at all — a shorter provision than any other state built so far. (4) The Department on Aging refers to assisting residents with "the appeals and grievance process" without naming the forum; that reference is quoted, and this page does not infer a route from it. (5) The department's page states no date of its own; its footer carries a 2026 copyright line. (6) No first-party statement of a South Carolina Medicaid bed-hold period was captured. Capture pending: per the source map. Internet Archive: not yet submitted. Reviewer: Carrie Schluter, reviewed 2026-08-30. Corrections: hello@fieldassembly.net.