Definitions

As used in this chapter: 1. "Administrative action" means an act, decision, or a failure to act or to make a decision by an owner, employee, or agent of a long-term care facility or by a public agency that affects the provision of services to a resident. 2. "Basic care facility" means any residence, not licensed under North Dakota Century Code chapter 23-16 by the state department of health, that provides room and board to five or more individuals who are not related by blood or marriage to the owner or manager of the residence and who, because of impaired capacity for independent living, require health, social, or personal care services, but do not require regular twenty-four-hour medical or nursing services. 3. "Complaint" means a written or verbal statement of alleged violation of a statute, rule, regulation, or policy, or other alleged wrongful act or omission related to health, safety, welfare, personal, or civil rights of a long-term care resident. 4. "Department" means the department of human services. 5. "Immediate family" means a member of the household or a relative with whom there is a close personal or significant financial relationship. 6. "Legal representative" means the long-term care resident's legal counsel, an individual who possesses the resident's unlimited power of attorney or power of attorney that specifically includes the authority to release confidential information, a guardian with unlimited power, or a guardian or conservator whose grant of authority specifically includes the authority to release confidential information. 7. "Long-term care facility" means a facility defined in North Dakota Century Code chapter 50-10.1, as any skilled nursing facility, intermediate care facility, basic care facility, nursing home as defined in subsection 3 of North Dakota Century Code section 43-34-01, boardinghouse, or swing bed hospital approved to furnish long-term care services; provided, that a facility, as defined by subsection 2 of North Dakota Century Code section 25-01.2-01, providing services to developmentally disabled persons is not a long-term care facility. 8. "Medical record" means a record maintained by a long-term care facility relating to the medical and physical condition, care, and treatment of a particular long-term care resident. The medical record includes social and other information as required by the facility and the resident. 9. "Reasonable access" means the ombudsman's right to access a long-term care facility, a long-term care resident, or a long-term care resident's records, based on the ombudsman's need to know information in the provision of services. 10. "Resident" means an individual residing in and receiving personal care from a long-term care facility. 11. "Volunteer ombudsman" means an individual appointed by the department as an ombudsman on the community level as opposed to the local or state level.