Charges to Hold a Bed During SNF Absence

Charges to the beneficiary for admission or readmission are not allowable. However, when temporarily leaving a SNF, a resident can choose to make bed-hold payments to the SNF.

Bed-hold payments are readily distinguishable from payments made prior to initial admission, in that the absent individual has already been admitted to the facility and has established residence in a particular living space within it. Similarly, bed-hold payments are distinguishable from payments for readmission, in that the latter compensate the facility merely for agreeing in advance to allow a departing resident to reenter the facility upon return, while bed-hold payments represent remuneration for the privilege of actually maintaining the resident’s personal effects in the particular living space that the resident has temporarily vacated.

One indicator that post-admission payments do, in fact, represent permissible bed-hold charges related to maintaining personal effects in a particular living space (rather than a prohibited charge for the act of readmission itself) would be that the charges are calculated on the basis of a per diem bed-hold payment rate multiplied by however many days the resident is absent, as opposed to assessing the resident a fixed sum at the time of departure from the facility.

the facility must inform residents in advance of their option to make bed-hold payments, as well as the amount of the facility’s charge. For these optional payments, the facility should make clear that the resident must affirmatively elect to make them prior to being billed. A facility cannot simply deem a resident to have opted to make such payments and then automatically bill for them upon the resident’s departure from the facility.