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Long-Term Care The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will award up to $900 million in grants to 17 states over five years for demonstration programs to build home- and community-based long-term care options in the Medicaid program, the agency announced Jan. 12. With the grants, states propose to transition more than 20,000 individuals from institutions into community settings, CMS said. People who need long-term care prefer to remain in their homes and communities whenever possible, CMS Acting Administrator Leslie Norwalk said in a statement. Allowing such options improves beneficiary satisfaction and can save money, she added. CMS awarded the first round of grants, more than $23 million to the selected states, to fund the demonstration programs. The grants ranged in size from $8 million awarded to Wisconsin to $35,000 awarded to South Carolina. In total, CMS plans to award $1.75 billion between 2007 and 2011 to help states shift Medicaid's traditional emphasis on institutional care to a system offering greater choices for individuals. The major objectives for states receiving the grants will be to increase use of home- and community-based (HCB) services among Medicaid recipients, eliminate barriers that prevent beneficiaries from receiving care in the setting of their choice, assist beneficiaries in institutions who choose to move to HCB settings, and provide for quality assurance for those in HCB settings. This "Money Follows the Person" balancing initiative was created as part of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 now being implemented by the agency. The DRA made changes in Medicaid that will allow states to add home- and community-based services to their permanent array of benefits, without having to establish a separate waiver program, as they have in the past. A second round of state grants may be announced later in 2007, CMS said
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