Living in a Nursing Home
ORC 3721.13 — rights that belong to the resident, not the family
Ohio writes the rights of a nursing home resident into a section rather than leaving them to a facility's own policy. They belong to the resident, which matters because most conversations about them happen between staff and a family member while the resident is in the room.
Who handles this in Ohio: legal aid programs, lawyer referral and the state offices, listed in the Ohio directory.
Private communication is a right, not an allowance. A resident has the right to private communication with others, through visits, telephone calls, letters and other means. A facility restricting who a resident may see or speak to, or listening in, is not exercising a discretion the section gives it.
Consent to treatment is the resident's to give or to withhold. The right is to give or withhold informed consent for treatment. Withholding is inside the right rather than outside it. A resident who declines something is exercising the same right as a resident who agrees, and a facility treating refusal as non compliance has the section the wrong way round.
There are two separate limits on moving somebody out. A resident has the right not to be transferred or discharged to a place incapable of meeting their health care and safety needs, and separately the right not to be transferred or discharged without adequate preparation beforehand. Those are two conditions and both have to be satisfied, so a facility that has found somewhere willing to take a resident has answered only one of them.
The section carries a longer list than this page reproduces, covering privacy, dignity, personal property, participation in care planning and the handling of complaints, among others. The four above are the ones that come up when a family first realizes something is wrong.
“Which of these is the facility saying it may do.”
The notice a facility has to give before a transfer or discharge, the appeal that follows one, and the enforcement provisions elsewhere in the chapter are not on this page. Facilities taking federal funding are subject to a further set of federal resident rights alongside these. Ohio's long term care ombudsman program investigates complaints at no charge and is usually the first place a concern goes, and whether conduct breaches the section is a question for a licensed Ohio attorney.
Sources for this section (1)
- ORC 3721.13 — The rights of a resident of a nursing home or residential care facility
Legal information, not legal advice. Verified as of September 2026. Applying it to a particular situation is the work of a licensed Ohio attorney.