All States/Territories

This fact sheet from the AARP Public Policy Institute takes a closer look at LTSS, revealing insights and new information, such as: what LTSS encompass, who needs LTSS, who provides LTSS, and where people with LTSS reside.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued a State Health Official letter that provides guidance on legislative changes to the modified adjusted gross income (MAGI)-based methodologies used for determining Medicaid and CHIP eligibility. In order to implement the changes to MAGI-based methods, states may need to update eligibility policies and procedures and make changes to eligibility systems logic.

The Journal of the American Geriatrics Society published an article looking at the link between diet and potential frailty in older age. Researchers pulled data from the Health, Aging, and Body Composition (Health ABC) Study and analyzed participants’ diets, activity, and shift between the categories of robust, pre-frail, and frail over four years.

This fact sheet was developed as part of the Center’s Helping States Support Families Caring for an Aging America initiative. Six states – Alabama, Idaho, Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Virginia- are involved with the initiative. This fact sheet provides an overview of unpaid family caregiving and lists options state leaders can consider implementing in order to support family caregivers in their state.

The Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services released a report that profiled the 10 states with the greatest change in Long-Term Services and Support (LTSS) system balancing. The report highlights characteristics of the 10 states and compares their change in LTSS system balancing with other states and provides a national overview on LTSS system balancing. State profiles consist of characteristics and strategies states utilized in their progress towards rebalancing their LTSS systems.

The National Center on Law and Elder Rights (NCLER) released a tip sheet to help older adults stop receiving robocalls. Telemarketers, debt collectors, and scammers utilize illegal robocalls- automated telephone calls- to target potential victims. This document provides older consumers with several tips they can use to lessen the frequency of robocalls, while protecting them from scams.

CMS released a bulletin addressing frequently asked questions regarding Electronic Visit Verification (EVV) requirements to beneficiaries receiving in-home care. This bulletin responds to questions surrounding beneficiaries with live-in caregivers, services delivered partially in the beneficiary's home, the provision of medical supplies, equipment, and appliances as a component of the Medicaid home health benefit, and the use of web-based timesheets as an EVV method.

The report provides an overview of the expected increased need for direct care workers and a breakdown of the current direct care workforce. In each description of barriers facing the direct care workforce, PHI includes program and policy recommendations. Challenges and recommendations in this report include areas regarding: wages and benefits, training, advanced roles, supervision, recruitment and retention, data collection, decision-making, family caregivers, and matching service registries.

In 2021, under a recently released rule from CMS, D-SNPs will be required to notify the state or state’s designee when enrollees experience Medicare-covered hospital or skilled nursing facility admissions in order to ensure timely transitions of care. The Integrated Care Resource Center has released a brief that examines approaches from three states – Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee – to develop and implement information-sharing processes for their D-SNPs that support care transitions.

CMS published a proposed rule to revise the current federal nursing home regulations and a final arbitration rule. Consumer Voice has released a side-by-side comparison chart of the current and the newly released proposed rules, as well as the final arbitration rules.