As of September 2011, the U.S. Department of the Treasury allows the delivery of federal
payments to RTFs held by nursing facilities. These accounts are also known as patient
fund accounts and are limited to Nursing Facility usage only. These accounts pool
federal benefits for residents:
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who receive Social Security and/or SSI benefits and the nursing facility is their
representative payee;
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who directly receive Social Security and/or SSI benefits (beneficiaries without a
representative payee); and
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who authorize the deposit of other funds, such as pensions and VA payments.
We use RTF in the rest of this section to refer to RTFs and RTAs.
As of March 1, 2013, all federal benefits must comply with Treasury’s Electronic Initiative,
which eliminates paper checks. Nursing facilities use the RTF to comply with the initiative.
If a financial institution allows a facility to use an RTF account, you can approve
the account as a collective account, using the following requirements. The account
must:
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show the payee’s name in the RTF title (payee’s name Resident Trust Fund);
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be managed by the named payee; and
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receive the full deposit of each beneficiary’s Social Security and SSI benefits.
IMPORTANT: If a beneficiary has a representative payee, the facility must be that representative
payee in order to receive a beneficiary’s benefits. The facility cannot receive a
beneficiary’s benefits that SSA has designated to another payee.
We do not consider some RTFs collective accounts. This often occurs when a corporation
has established an RTF for their residents, but they are not the payee that SSA selected
to receive and manage funds. For examples of when an RTF is and is not considered
an acceptable collective account, see GN 00603.020H.3. and GN 00603.020C.1. in this section
For RTF titling examples, refer to GN 00603.020D in this section.
For RTF titling scenarios, refer to GN 00603.020H.3. and GN 00603.020H.4. in this section.
For other RTF policy, refer to GN 00603.020E.1.c. in this section.