AN ACT relating to certificate of need.
HB354 revises Kentucky’s certificate of need (CON) laws governing health facilities and health services. The bill keeps the Cabinet’s core role in approving, denying, issuing, revoking, and enforcing CON decisions, but it tightens and clarifies the review process, including application content, batching of similar applications, review timelines, hearing rights, reconsideration, and judicial appeal procedures. It also updates the criteria the Cabinet must use when evaluating whether a proposal is consistent with the state health plan, needed in a defined area, economically feasible, and capable of providing quality care.
A major substantive change is in the long-term care bed provisions. The bill requires the state health plan’s bed-need methodology to be statistically valid, updated annually, and applied uniformly, and it expressly excludes continuing care retirement community nursing home beds from certain long-term care bed need calculations. It also preserves and clarifies special treatment for certain nonsubstantive review projects, including relocations, replacements, equipment repairs, cost escalations, and a narrow grandfathered exception for a specific ambulatory surgical center scenario tied to prior litigation and accreditation history.
HB354 would amend multiple sections of KRS Chapter 216B, the statutory framework for Kentucky’s certificate of need program. It changes procedural rights and deadlines for applicants and affected persons, narrows some hearing and appeal language to focus more directly on applicants, and sets firm time limits for review and issuance of decisions. It also directs the Cabinet to promulgate or maintain regulations on review procedures, fees, advisory opinions, and compliance reviews, while modifying how the state health plan and CON criteria treat long-term care beds, continuing care retirement communities, and certain ambulatory surgical centers.
No committee transcripts or recorded votes were provided, so there is no direct evidence of debate, support, or opposition from the available materials. Based on the bill text alone, the measure appears to be a technical and policy-focused update to the CON process, with a mix of streamlining provisions and targeted substantive changes. The overall tone of the legislation suggests an effort to clarify administrative procedures while preserving state oversight of health facility expansion.
The most likely points of contention are the bill’s targeted exceptions and exclusions in the certificate of need process. Health care providers and facility operators may disagree over the exclusion of continuing care retirement community nursing home beds from long-term care need calculations, as well as the special nonsubstantive review treatment for certain ambulatory surgical centers. There may also be tension between proponents of faster, more predictable review timelines and parties who favor broader participation rights for affected persons in hearings and appeals, since the bill narrows some references from “any party” or “affected persons” to “applicants” in several sections.