Complete Affiliation of AL Background Studies Before Home Care Records Close

Posted on September 8, 2021 by Bobbie Guidry

LeadingAge Minnesota encourages all assisted living providers to complete the background study affiliation process before the Minnesota Department of Health closes home care records. If your home care agency is closing, you must act quickly if you have staff to affiliate from your home care agency record.

Once a licensed entity closes, the background study records are locked. We have requested that MDH keep the home care agencies open for a brief period to allow providers to complete the process.

A commonly asked question is if all employees of an assisted living need a new background study. In most situations, new background studies should not be required; however, you must include all employees under the newly established assisted living record. If your assisted living was able to "affiliate" the managerial employees from your previous home care background study record, then you can also affiliate the remainder of your employees from the previous home care record under your new assisted living facility record. If you have many employees to affiliate, the designated Sensitive Information Person (SIP) can add individuals under them to assist in the process.

If your facility was in a situation that required a new SIP or was, for some other reason, not able to affiliate individuals from the home care record to the new assisted living record, then new background studies must be completed for your employees. Employees, individual contractors providing services, and regularly scheduled volunteers providing services are subject to the background study required by section 144.057 and may be disqualified under chapter 245C.