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CMS Changes to the Hospital and Critical Access Hospital Conditions of Participation to Ensure Visitation for All Patients

On April 15, 2010, the White House issued a Presidential Memorandum on Hospital Visitation to the Secretary of Health and Human Services. As part of the directives of the memorandum, the Department of Health and Human Services, through the Office of the Secretary, tasked the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) with developing a Medicare requirement for inpatient facilities, specifically hospitals (including Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs)), that would address the right of a patient to choose who may visit him or her when he or she is an inpatient of a facility. 

The proposed rule would require Hospitals to have written policies and procedures regarding the visitation rights of patients, including any clinically necessary and reasonable restrictions or limitations that the hospital may need to place on such rights as well as the reasons for the clinical restrictions or limitations.  Other parts of this proposed regulation include:

  • Proposing that hospitals would not be permitted to restrict, limit, or otherwise deny visitation privileges on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. 
  • The hospital must also inform each patient, or his or her representative where appropriate (as allowed under State law), of the patient’s visitation rights, including any clinical restrictions or limitations. 
  • As part of his or her visitation rights, each patient (or representative where appropriate) must be informed of the right, subject to his or her consent, to receive visitors, including family members, spouses, partners (including same-sex partners), or others, and of the right to withdraw or deny such consent at any time.
  • Because the CoPs for CAHs do not currently contain any patients’ rights provisions, CMS is proposing to add a new standard on patient visitation rights within the existing CoPs on provision of services.