Duties and responsibilities of agency; rules.

(1) The agency is designated as the single state agency to issue, revoke, or deny certificates of need and to issue, revoke, or deny exemptions from certificate-of-need review in accordance with present and future federal and state statutes. The agency is designated as the state health planning agency for purposes of federal law.

(2) In the exercise of its authority to issue licenses to health care facilities, as provided under chapter 393 and parts II, IV, and VIII of chapter 400, the agency may not issue a license to any health care facility that fails to receive a certificate of need or an exemption for the licensed facility.

(3) The agency shall establish, by rule, uniform need methodologies for health facilities. In developing uniform need methodologies, the agency shall, at a minimum, consider the demographic characteristics of the population, the health status of the population, service use patterns, standards and trends, geographic accessibility, and market economics.

(4) Prior to determining that there is a need for additional community nursing facility beds in any area of the state, the agency shall determine that the need cannot be met through the provision, enhancement, or expansion of home and community-based services. In determining such need, the agency shall examine nursing home placement patterns and demographic patterns of persons entering nursing homes and the availability of and effectiveness of existing home-based and community-based service delivery systems at meeting the long-term care needs of the population. The agency shall recommend to the Legislature changes that could be made to existing home-based and community-based delivery systems to lessen the need for additional nursing facility beds.

(5) The agency shall establish by rule a nursing-home-bed-need methodology that has a goal of maintaining a subdistrict average occupancy rate of 92 percent.

(6) If nursing home bed need is determined to exist in geographically contiguous subdistricts within a district, an applicant may aggregate the subdistricts’ need for a new community nursing home in one of the subdistricts. If need is aggregated from two subdistricts, the proposed nursing home site must be located in the subdistrict with the greater need as published by the agency in the Florida Administrative Register. However, if need is aggregated from more than two subdistricts, the location of the proposed nursing home site must provide reasonable geographic access for residents in the respective subdistricts given the relative bed need in each subdistrict.

(7) If nursing home bed need is determined to exist in a subdistrict, an additional positive application factor may be recognized in the application review process for an applicant who agrees to voluntarily relinquish licensed nursing home beds in one or more subdistricts where there is no calculated need. The applicant must demonstrate that it operates, controls, or has an agreement with another licensed community nursing home to ensure that beds are voluntarily relinquished if the application is approved and the applicant is licensed.

(8) The agency may adopt rules necessary to implement ss. 408.031-408.045.