The Florida Senate

The agency is designated as the single state agency to issue, revoke, or deny certificates of need and to issue, revoke, or deny exemptions from certificate-of-need review in accordance with present and future federal and state statutes. The agency is designated as the state health planning agency for purposes of federal law.

In the exercise of its authority to issue licenses to health care facilities and health service providers, as provided under chapters 393 and 395 and parts II and IV of chapter 400, the agency may not issue a license to any health care facility or health service provider that fails to receive a certificate of need or an exemption for the licensed facility or service.

The agency shall establish, by rule, uniform need methodologies for health services and health facilities. In developing uniform need methodologies, the agency shall, at a minimum, consider the demographic characteristics of the population, the health status of the population, service use patterns, standards and trends, geographic accessibility, and market economics.

Prior to determining that there is a need for additional community nursing facility beds in any area of the state, the agency shall determine that the need cannot be met through the provision, enhancement, or expansion of home and community-based services. In determining such need, the agency shall examine nursing home placement patterns and demographic patterns of persons entering nursing homes and the availability of and effectiveness of existing home-based and community-based service delivery systems at meeting the long-term care needs of the population. The agency shall recommend to the Legislature changes that could be made to existing home-based and community-based delivery systems to lessen the need for additional nursing facility beds.

The agency shall establish by rule a nursing-home-bed-need methodology that has a goal of maintaining a subdistrict average occupancy rate of 94 percent and that reduces the community nursing home bed need for the areas of the state where the agency establishes pilot community diversion programs through the Title XIX aging waiver program.

The agency may adopt rules necessary to implement ss. 408.031-408.045.