Senate Bill 2386

AN ACT TO AMEND SECTIONS 41-85-3 AND 41-85-7, MISSISSIPPI CODE OF 1972, TO REVISE THE DEFINITION OF "HOSPICE" TO CONFORM TO THE FEDERAL DEFINITION OF TERMINALLY ILL FOR FACILITY LICENSURE PURPOSES; AND FOR RELATED PURPOSES.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI:

SECTION 1. Section 41-85-3, Mississippi Code of 1972, is amended as follows:

41-85-3. When used in this chapter, unless the context otherwise requires:

(a) "Autonomous" means a separate and distinct operational entity which functions under its own administration and bylaws, either within or independently of a parent organization.

(b) "Department" means the Mississippi Department of Health.

(d) "Hospice" means an autonomous, centrally administered, nonprofit or profit, medically directed, nurse-coordinated program providing a continuum of home, outpatient and homelike inpatient care for not less than four (4) terminally ill patients and their families. It employs a hospice care team to assist in providing palliative and supportive care to meet the special needs arising out of the physical, emotional, spiritual, social and economic stresses which are experienced during the final stages of illness and during dying and bereavement. This care is available twenty-four (24) hours a day, seven (7) days a week, and is provided on the basis of need regardless of inability to pay.

(e) "Hospice care team" means an interdisciplinary team which is a working unit composed by the integration of the various helping professions and lay persons providing hospice care. Such team shall, as a minimum, consist of a licensed physician, a registered nurse, a social worker, a member of the clergy or a counselor and volunteers.

(f) "Hospice services" means items and services furnished to an individual by a hospice, or by others under arrangements with such a hospice program.

(g) "Medically directed" means that the delivery of medical care is directed by a licensed physician who is employed by the hospice for the purpose of providing ongoing palliative care as a participating care giver on the hospice care team.

(h) "Palliative care" means the reduction or abatement of pain and other troubling symptoms by appropriate coordination of all elements of the hospice care team needed to achieve needed relief of distress.

(i) "Patient" means the terminally ill individual receiving hospice services.

(j) "Person" means an individual, a trust or estate, partnership, corporation, association, the state, or a political subdivision or agency of the state.

(k) "Terminally ill" refers to a medical prognosis of limited expected survival, of six (6) months or less at the time of referral to a hospice, of an individual who is experiencing an illness for which therapeutic strategies directed toward cure and control of the disease alone outside the context of symptom control are no longer appropriate.

SECTION 2. Section 41-85-7, Mississippi Code of 1972, is amended as follows:

41-85-7. The administration of this chapter is vested in the Mississippi Department of Health, which shall:

(a) Prepare and furnish all forms necessary under the provisions of this chapter in relation to applications for licensure or renewals thereof;

(b) Collect in advance at the time of filing an application for a license or at the time of renewal of a license a fee of Five Hundred Dollars ($500.00);

(c) Conduct * * * inspections of hospice facilities at such intervals as the licensing agency may direct which may be the same inspection as the annual Medicare certification inspection; and

(d) Promulgate applicable rules and standards in furtherance of the purpose of this chapter and may amend such rules as may be necessary. The rules shall include, but not be limited to, the following:

(i) The qualifications of professional and ancillary personnel in order to adequately furnish hospice care;

(ii) Standards for the organization and quality of patient care;

(iii) Procedures for maintaining records; and

(iv) Provision for the inpatient component of hospice care and for other professional and ancillary hospice services.

SECTION 3. This act shall take effect and be in force from and after July 1, 2006.