A July 24, 2012 article in the New York Times counted Louisville, Kentucky as a city that is touting itself as a market for business opportunities in the elder care arena.
The article cites the construction of a new eight story commercial office and laboratory building near downtown Louisville as signaling an expansion of one of the cities burgeoning economic sectors of lifelong wellness and aging care.
Developed in a partnership between the city and the University of Louisville, the 200,000 square foot campus will house the offices of several elder care companies when completed next year. Tenants will include Signature HealthCare, a previously Florida-based long term care provider who relocated to Louisville due to favorable economic incentives, as well as an innovation center to develop start-up health technology and service companies. Additionally, the center will house an exhibition hall for innovative products and practices in the elder care area, as well as a state-supported office to help finance new companies.
Louisville currently has more than five hundred companies that specialize in all aspects of health care, from building and managing health centers, to providing health insurance, as well as the design of medical equipment and the development of health information and management systems. Some of the larger health care companies located in Louisville includes Humana, Trilogy Health Services, Atria Senior Living, and Kindred Healthcare. Although the city estimates that twenty companies involved in care for the aging are founded in Louisville each year, there is another side to the story.
Kentucky is also a hot bed of nursing home litigation. Its plaintiff-friendly atmosphere, with liberal discovery rules and no caps on damages, has already caused one major nursing home provider, Extendicare Health Services, to announce that it is leaving Kentucky. Citing the lack of tort reform in the state, Extendicare has leased all twenty-one (21) of its nursing homes in Kentucky to a Texas-based provider, which also has the option to purchase all of the centers during the time of the lease.
Tim Lukenda, President and CEO of Extendicare REIT, said that “leaving the state was a tough decision that was no reflection on the employees or the facilities, but was prudent in terms of costs and litigation and the lack of possibility of tort reform. Within the last year, we saw that things were getting worse, not better.” The proposed tort reform bill, initially introduced as HB 361, was discussed on this blog back in March of this year. The main goal of the bill was to establish a medical review panel system for use in civil litigation relating to long-term care facilities. This system has seen success in other states; most notably in Indiana where the Medical Malpractice Act has established limitations on damages awards and a medical review panel. The bill never even had a chance to be brought before the legislature thanks in large part to a very aggressive campaign against it by plaintiff-oriented groups, most notably the Kentucky Justice Association.
This dichotomy is hard to explain, but should, at least for the near future, indicate an increase in Kentucky litigation as well as opportunities in other practice areas of elder care related businesses. For questions or more information regarding elder care litigation in Kentucky, contact A. Courtney Guild at acguild@hallrender.com.
