Section 80: Payments for care by cities, towns or able patients; definitions; classifications; appeals
Section 80. Each city and town shall pay to the commonwealth its share of the cost of providing general health supplies, care, services and accommodations for any tuberculosis patient resident in such city or town hospitalized under section 78 or section 79 a sum equal to one-half the reasonable cost as established by the executive office of health and human services or a governmental unit designated by the executive office. If a patient is able to pay or if a third party payor is responsible, the department shall collect from the patient or the payor such rates as are established by said executive office. Fifty per cent of the amount so received on account of any patient shall be credited against the payment charged to a city or town on account of such patient as authorized in this section.
For the purposes of this section, the term ''resident'' means any person having his principal living quarters in such city or town and having no present intention to move to another city or town, or, in the case of a person who is an inmate or patient in an institution, in the city or town in which he last maintained a residence outside of an institution; provided, however, that any tuberculous patient determined to be a chronically non-resident person and a special problem for tuberculosis disease control shall not be charged as a resident of any city or town, and shall be the financial responsibility of the state. For the purposes of this section an ''institution'' shall include any sanatorium, hospital, rest home, convalescent or nursing home, for the operation of which a license is required by law; any facility conducted by an agency incorporated under chapter one hundred and eighty; and any facility operated by municipal, county, state and federal governments. For purposes of this section the term ''chronically non-resident'' means a person who evidences by his past conduct an inability or unwillingness to establish and maintain a residency with any degree of permanency and whose instability and general living standards in exposing himself and others to infection makes him a special problem for tuberculosis disease control in the commonwealth. If a city or town requests that a patient be classified as chronically nonresident as indicated in this section, the division of sanatoria and tuberculosis may so classify him. If on such a request, the said division of sanatoria and tuberculosis does not agree to so classify the patient, the city or town may appeal this decision to a three-member board made up as follows: The public health council shall appoint the members of the board who shall serve without compensation. In the first appointments, one member shall be appointed for three years, one for two, and one for one year with all appointments thereafter being for three years. One member of the board shall be a medical director of a municipal health department, one member shall be a non-medical public health administrator or agent of a municipal health department, and one member shall be a person experienced in social work on a municipal or state level. On any such appeal the board shall hold a hearing and may affirm or reverse such decision. The decision of the board shall be final.
Patients who are receiving or are eligible to receive public assistance shall have their responsibility to pay such charges to their city or town of residence fixed in accordance with the provisions of the particular category of public assistance applicable to them.