Long-Term Care

Contact: Martha Everett Meng

Murtha Cullina LLP is dedicated to quality, value and client-centered service. Our Long-Term Care Practice Group specializes in meeting the needs of nursing home, assisted living and senior housing providers. The firm represents nearly 200 for-profit and not-for-profit nursing homes and the majority of Connecticut's assisted living providers. We also serve as general counsel to the Connecticut Association of Health Care Facilities (CAHCF), the major Connecticut nursing home association.

This strong long-term care client base has allowed us to develop significant expertise and in-depth attorney staffing to meet our long-term care clients' needs. At the same time, our interdisciplinary team approach provides our clients with attorneys who are experienced in all types of legal issues as they affect the long-term care provider community. This range and depth of experience assures quality legal services specifically designed to meet the needs of long-term care providers.

Our attorneys have an outstanding record of service to industry and professional groups in long-term care, and with government-industry partnerships. Martha Everett Meng has served as a member of the government-provider groups that developed Connecticut's laws for assisted living communities and continuing care retirement communities, as well as on numerous other committees and Task Forces. She also served as a founder of the Connecticut Assisted Living Association (CALA) and continues active participation in CALA's Board of Directors. Louis B. Todisco is a Director of the Connecticut Association of Long-Term Care Financial Managers. Members of the Long-Term Care Practice Group frequently make presentations at meetings of long-term care providers, including CAHCF, CALA, the Massachusetts Extended Care Federation, The American Health Care Association, The American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging, and the Assisted Living Federation of America.

Murtha Cullina's attorneys are intensely aware of the cost and reimbursement pressures imposed on today's long-term care providers and their need for superior value in legal services. Because our attorneys are intimately familiar with this challenging business environment, we are able to focus our efforts on developing practical, cost-effective solutions to legal problems. Clients will find our rates highly competitive. More importantly, our team approach allows us to utilize attorneys with different levels of experience and expertise for each client project to achieve an appropriate, cost-effective fee structure and true value.

Our attorneys also know the value of a prompt and effective response to clients' concerns. Because of their experience and credibility, the Group's attorneys have been able to establish and promote positive and productive working relationships with key personnel at state and federal long-term care regulatory agencies. These relationships assist our clients in obtaining timely information and regulatory response. And, while we emphasize ways to achieve our clients' objectives without overt conflict in court, we have, when necessary, obtained court rulings establishing substantive protections for providers, often on new theories resulting in court decisions of first impression. These decisions include The Jewish Home for the Elderly of Fairfield County, Inc. v. Cantore, which affirmed the duties of Conservators to pay nursing home bills and to secure Medicaid assistance in a timely manner; Connecticut Association of Health Care Facilities v. Worrell, which established the right of associations to bring lawsuits in Connecticut; and Salmon Brook Convalescent Home v. Commission on Hospitals and Health Care, which requires Connecticut state agencies to engage in a formal rule-making process, including the opportunity for public comment, prior to enforcing any substantive rule of general applicability.

Quality and value, however, are meaningless in the absence of prompt, client-centered service. We are justly proud of our devotion to returning calls promptly and completing work in a timely manner. We also assign a primary partner for each client and each project, to assure that all client concerns receive prompt attention and that work is managed to produce a responsive, cost-effective and timely result. Each client deserves, and receives, our undivided and highly focused attention.

Our attorneys know first-hand the regulatory and economic challenges currently faced by all long-term care providers. Our history of assuring quality, value and client-centered service enables us to give our long-term care clients the legal resources they need to meet these challenges successfully.

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