With time running out to comply with what could be a $240 million generator mandate handed down by Gov. Rick Scott, nursing-home administrators and long-term care lobbyists left a meeting without an indication of what, if anything the state will do to help offset the costs.

Members of a nursing-home payment workgroup may have to wait until November before state Medicaid officials discuss generators and whether the facilities can be reimbursed under an existing cost-based reimbursement system that has been in effect for more than 20 years or through a prospective payment system that starts in October 2018. Under a prospective payment system, facilities receive prepaid fixed amounts.

Scott this month directed the Agency for Health Care Administration and the Department of Elder Affairs to issue emergency rules requiring every nursing home and assisted living facility to have a generator that can power air conditioning for 96 hours. He made the move after the deaths of residents of a Broward County nursing home, where Hurricane Irma knocked out the air-conditioning system.