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Using data from 360 health care providers and 540 Medicaid eligible people with disabilities (PWD), the authors compared perceived barriers to care from the perspective of both providers and PWD. The results indicated major variations in provider and PWD perceptions. Policy responses to these findings should address the specific needs of people with different types of disabling conditions rather than assuming all PWD face similar challenges in accessing and utilizing health care.

This study evaluates the outcomes of the disability applications submitted to the Social Security Administration (SSA) through the Benefits Entitlement Services Team (B.E.S.T) Demonstration Project. B.E.S.T was a collaborative effort to locate homeless adults and assist them in applying for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments and/or Disability Insurance (DI). The findings show that B.E.S.T contributed to increased access to disability benefits for applicants.

The employment rate among persons with disabilities is less than half the rate among persons without disabilities. Broad innovations are needed to reduce this disparity.These authors examined employers' perspective related to: a) challenges they face when hiring people with disabilities, b) advantages (i.e. the business case) to employing people with disabilities, and c) their recommendations for innovations in both the public disability employment services systems and their own hiring practices

A growing emphasis on government accountability has increased interest in the collection and use of employment outcomes data. At the national level, data on employment for individuals with disabilities are available through multiple data collection systems. However, many systems are fragmented and only loosely coordinated across agencies. This article offers a qualitative, in-depth look at how employment data is collected and used within four state intellectual/developmental disability agencies.

Although Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits are an important support to many people with disabilities, modifications to programs are under consideration given current and projected governmental fiscal constraints. This article provides data about levels of safety net cross-participation among working age SSDI and SSI program participants and estimates how changes to disability benefit levels might influence their economic security.

Adults with intellectual disability experience substantial health inequities. The authors sought to investigate the extent to which a sample of international public health research includes and identifies people with intellectual disability. Among eligible articles in these selected public health journals, it was found that cohort studies passively exclude people with intellectual disability, while randomized controlled trials (RCTs) actively exclude this population.

We use the American Time Use Survey to examine the extent to which adults with disabilities—defined using both the new six-question sequence on disability and the traditional work-limitation question—spend more time on health-related activities and less time on other activities than those without disabilities.

A new criticism of the variety in measures serving to identify the disabled population in the American Community Survey (ACS) has been raised by Burkhauser, Houtenville, and Tennant. This article provides another perspective on the relationship of the current ACS measure and a work limitation measure demonstrating the complications introduced by combining measures that represent two different metrics and introducing an unmeasured environmental element.

The Money Follows the Person (MFP) demonstration grant program helps long-term residents of institutions move back to the community. This report aims to answer several questions about the expenditures (medical care and long-term services and supports [LTSS] expenditures) of people who transition from institutional care to community-based LTSS.

In this brief, the authors summarize key features of the Social Security Disability Insurance program and describe some of the salient issues policymakers will need to consider to address the projected depletion of the SSDI Trust Fund in 2016. They also discuss the eligibility criteria for the program, benefit levels, and beneficiaries' ability to work.