(1) When an assisted living facility contracts with the department to provide adult residential care services, enhanced adult residential care services, or assisted living services under chapter
74.39A RCW, the assisted living facility must hold a medicaid eligible resident's room or unit when short-term care is needed in a nursing home or hospital, the resident is likely to return to the assisted living facility, and payment is made under subsection (2) of this section.
(2) The medicaid resident's bed or unit shall be held for up to twenty days. The per day bed or unit hold compensation amount shall be seventy percent of the daily rate paid for the first seven days the bed or unit is held for the resident who needs short-term nursing home care or hospitalization. The rate for the eighth through the twentieth day a bed is held shall be established in rule, but shall be no lower than ten dollars per day the bed or unit is held.
(3) The assisted living facility may seek third-party payment to hold a bed or unit for twenty-one days or longer. The third-party payment shall not exceed the medicaid daily rate paid to the facility for the resident. If third-party payment is not available, the medicaid resident may return to the first available and appropriate bed or unit, if the resident continues to meet the admission criteria under this chapter.