O.C.G.A.
O.C.G.A.

O.C.G.A. § 31-7-155 (2019)

Certificates of need for new service or extending service area; exemption from certificate

✓ O.C.G.A. — 2019 edition (Public.Resource.Org Release 73)
Code text and O.C.G.A. statutory annotations on this page reflect the 2019 Official Code of Georgia Annotated (Public.Resource.Org Release 73, 2019-08-21; public domain per Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). The Syfert case-law annotations in Notes of Decisions, below, are current.
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(a) No home health agency initiating service or extending the range of its service area shall be licensed unless the department determines, in accordance with Article 3 of Chapter 6 of this title and regulations pursuant thereto, that there is a need for said services within the area to be served. All home health agencies which were delivering services prior to July 1, 1979, and were certified for participation in either Title XVIII or Title XIX of the federal Social Security Act prior to such date shall be exempt from a certificate of need, except in those instances where expansion of services or service areas is requested by such home health agencies. Such exemption from a certificate of need shall extend to all areas in which a home health agency was licensed by the department to provide services on or before December 31, 1989, except as provided in subsection (b) of this Code section. (b) Concerning an exemption from a certificate of need pursuant to subsection (a) of this Code section, service areas which were the subject of litigation pending in any court of competent jurisdiction, whether by way of appeal, remand, stay, or otherwise, as of December 31, 1989, shall not be so exempt except as set forth in the final unappealed administrative or judicial decision rendered in such litigation. (c) Except with respect to a home health agency’s service areas which were the subject of litigation pending in any court of competent jurisdiction as of December 31, 1989, the department shall not consider any request for or issue a determination of an exemption from a certificate of need pursuant to this Code section after December 31, 1989.

History

Ga. L. 1980, p. 1790, § 8; Ga. L. 1990, p. 378, § 1; Ga. L. 1999, p. 296, § 22; Ga. L. 2008, p. 12, § 2-16/SB 433.

Annotations

Cross references. - Powers and duties of counties relating to support of paupers, T. 36, C. 12.

U.S. Code. - Titles XVIII and XIX of the federal Social Security Act, referred to in this Code section, are codified as 42 U.S.C. §§ 1395 et seq. and 1396 et seq., respectively.

JUDICIAL DECISIONS Grandfather status not acquired. - O.C.G.A. § 31-7-155 did not authorize a determination by the State Health Plan-

ning Agency (now Department of Community Health) that agencies which had not been servicing the geographic areas at

issue prior to July 1, 1979, had nevertheless acquired grandfather status in such areas because the agencies would have been providing services there prior to such date had it not been for misdirection on the part of certain employees of the Department of Human Resources (now the Department of Community Health for

these purposes). Chattahoochee Valley Home Health Care, Inc. v. Healthmaster, Inc., 191 Ga. App. 42, 381 S.E.2d 56, grant of cert. vacated, Healthmaster, Inc. v. Chattahoochee Valley Home Health Care, Inc., 259 Ga. 387, 385 S.E.2d 290 (1989), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 1079, 110 S. Ct. 1132, 107 L. Ed. 2d 1037 (1990).

Notes of Decisions
Cited in 3 cases, 1989–1993 · leading case: Chattahoochee Valley Home Health Care, Inc. v. Healthmaster, Inc., 381 S.E.2d 56 (Ga. Ct. App. 1989).
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Chattahoochee Valley Home Health Care, Inc. v. Healthmaster, Inc., 381 S.E.2d 56 (Ga. Ct. App. 1989). · cites it 4× “, to provide home health services in certain specified counties, without the necessity of obtaining a certificate of need pursuant to OCGA § 31-7-155. The SHPA determined that the acquired firms had “grandfather” rights in some, but not all, of the counties in question.”
ABC Home Health Servs., Inc. v. Georgia Dep't of Med. Assistance, 439 S.E.2d 696 (Ga. Ct. App. 1993). · cites it 2× “OCGA § 31-7-155. The rules adopted by DHR for Home Health Agencies are for the purpose of implementing DHR’s authority “to establish the licensing procedures and standards of operation” for such agencies.”
Three Rivers Home Health Servs., Inc. v. Healthmaster, Inc., 388 S.E.2d 7 (Ga. Ct. App. 1989). · cites it 4× “(hereinafter referred to together as Healthmaster) to provide home health services in certain specified Georgia counties without obtaining a certificate of need pursuant to OCGA § 31-7-155. *426 The Georgia Supreme Court has declined to review our decision in Chattahoochee…”
Annotations are extracted automatically from the opinions in the Syfert caselaw corpus and ranked by authority, recency, and treatment. Dots show Syfertize treatment of the citing case itself.