Nursing Home Administrator Licensing – DQA Waiver & DSPS Timeline

At a recent quarterly meeting with Jessica Radtke from DQA’s Bureau of Nursing Home Resident Care (BNHRC) and others from the Bureau, one item that was shared with participants is the issue of unlicensed/interim Nursing Home Administrators (NHAs).

State law and administrative code require every nursing home to be supervised by a licensed Nursing Home Administrator. Under the administrative code DHS 132.41(3)(b), when an administrator is terminated or the administrator leaves for any other reason, a replacement shall be employed or designated by the Facility within 120 days of the vacancy. During this vacancy, a temporary replacement shall be employed or designated by the facility, who is competent to fulfill the functions of an administrator.

During the recent meeting, Jessica raised the issue that some providers are requesting waivers and variances right away, as is generally allowed under admin code, but that you do not need to request these waivers until you are approaching the 120 day deadline in code.

One thing to note with the 120 day deadline, is that many applications for initial NHA licenses to the Department of Safety and Professional Services (DSPS) are taking quite awhile to be processed and issued, with two recent examples taking 99 and 109 days from application to issuance. Applicants are seeing delays between the time they apply, receive codes to take both the state and national tests, and delays in the review of their education materials.

If you are experiencing delays with the review and issuance of your Nursing Home Administrator license, please reach out to Eric at WHCA to help move the process along. When reaching out, please provide the following information to help ensure that Eric can reach out to contacts at DSPS right away:

• Applicant’s full name.
• Applicant’s address.
• Applicant’s phone number & email address.
• Application number (format PAR-XXXXXXXXXX)
• Your understanding of the current status of your application and any other updates or information that might be relevant.