The department shall establish, by rule, the procedures, principles, and conditions for the nursing facility medicaid payment system addressed by the following principles:

(1) The department must receive complete, annual reporting of all costs and the financial condition of each contractor, prepared and presented in a standardized manner. The department shall establish, by rule, due dates, requirements for cost report completion, actions required for improperly completed or late cost reports, fines for any statutory or regulatory noncompliance, retention requirements, and public disclosure requirements.

(2) The department shall examine all cost reports to determine whether the information is correct, complete, and reported in compliance with this chapter, department rules and instructions, and generally accepted accounting principles.

(3) Each contractor must establish and maintain, as a service to the resident, a bookkeeping system incorporated into the business records for all resident funds entrusted to the contractor and received by the contractor for the resident. The department shall adopt rules to ensure that resident personal funds handled by the contractor are maintained by each contractor in a manner that is, at a minimum, consistent with federal requirements.

(4) The department shall have the authority to audit resident trust funds and receivables, at its discretion.

(5) Contractors shall provide the department access to the nursing facility, all financial and statistical records, and all working papers that are in support of the cost report, receivables, and resident trust funds.

(6) The department shall establish a settlement process in order to reconcile medicaid resident days to billed days and medicaid payments for the preceding calendar year. The settlement process shall ensure that any savings in the direct care or therapy care component rates be shifted only between direct care and therapy care component rates, and shall not be shifted into any other rate components.

(7) The department shall define and identify allowable and unallowable costs.

(8) A contractor shall bill the department for care provided to medicaid recipients, and the department shall pay a contractor for service rendered under the facility contract and appropriately billed. Billing and payment procedures shall be specified by rule.

(9) The department shall establish the conditions for participation in the nursing facility medicaid payment system.

(10) The department shall establish procedures and a rate setting methodology for a change of ownership.

(11) The department shall establish, consistent with federal requirements for nursing facilities participating in the medicaid program, an appeals or exception procedure that allows individual nursing home providers an opportunity to receive prompt administrative review of payment rates with respect to such issues as the department deems appropriate.

(12) The department shall have authority to adopt, amend, and rescind such administrative rules and definitions as it deems necessary to carry out the policies and purposes of this chapter.

Effective date—2010 1st sp.s. c 34: See note following RCW 74.46.010.