Federal official faults Oklahoma nursing facility

Heritage Hills discharged patient with HIV

An Oklahoma nursing facility has agreed to make changes after federal officials said it discharged a patient for having HIV.

The Office for Civil Rights under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced Friday that Heritage Hills Living and Rehabilitation Center had entered into an agreement related to the discharge. Having HIV or AIDS is considered a disability under federal law, so discharging a patient based on having the virus is discrimination. HHS has the authority to investigate alleged discrimination at facilities that accept Medicare or Medicaid, which includes nearly all nursing facilities.

Heritage Hills is an 81-bed facility in McAlester. Employees who answered the phone at Heritage Hills said they had never heard of a resident being discharged because of HIV.

The news release offered few details, other than that the patient is female and was seriously ill at the time she was discharged. It didn’t specify what happened to the patient after she was discharged.

“It is heart-wrenching to see a seriously ill person ejected from a federally funded medical facility simply because they were HIV positive. Such conduct is not only tragic, it is illegal, and as our investigation and resolution of this complaint demonstrates, OCR is committed to ensuring that persons with disabilities — including those with HIV/AIDS — are afforded equal access to health care,” Roger Severino, director of HHS’ Office of Civil Rights, said in a news release.

The facility agreed to not discharge any patients unlawfully and to:

• Report its admissions and discharge data to federal officials for a year

• Put someone in charge of civil rights compliance

• Post a nondiscrimination policy

• Inform patients of their right to complain to federal officials

• Train staff about HIV and nondiscrimination

• Revise admissions policies to ensure people with disabilities can participate fully.

If HHS determined Heritage Hills wasn’t complying with the agreement, it could levy penalties, up to cutting Medicare and Medicaid payments. The department rarely does that, however, because it would effectively force facilities to close and their residents to find new homes.