Arkansas

The Cash & Counseling Demonstration gives Medicaid beneficiaries who are eligible for personal care services a consumer-directed allowance in lieu of traditional agency services. This report discusses the effects of this program on both the medicaid costs and personal care services recieved in Arkansas.

This guide is designed to provide states and programs involved in consumer-directed services with a practical handbook on ensuring and improving the quality of services. This guide is based on a philosophy that the views of the major program stakeholders – consumers, families, program staff, regulators, funders – are the necessary starting point for the design of a quality system.

This report addresses the liability issues that may arise in government-sponsored consumer-directed personal assistance programs. The report focuses on Cash & Counseling Demonstration programs in AR, FL & NJ, In-Home Supportive Services Program in CA & Consumer-Directed Personal Assistance Program in NY. The reports purpose: first, identify circumstances where negligence could result in liability and what persons are likely to be liable; second, identify steps to reduce exposure to liability.

Medicaid beneficiaries who have disabilities and receive personal care services (PCS) from home care agencies have little control over their care. As a result, some are dissatisfied, have unmet needs, and experience diminished quality of life. This study of Arkansas’s Cash and Counseling demonstration program, IndependentChoices, examines how consumer direction affects these aspects of care quality relative to agency-directed services

The report describes the design & implementation of Arkansas’ model of Cash & Counseling—IndependentChoices—and draws lessons from the state’s experience. The report is based on in-person interviews conducted with Arkansas state officials, IndependentChoices’ program staff, staff providing counseling and fiscal services under IndependentChoices, staff providing traditional PAS in Arkansas, and staff of advocate organizations. The summary also draw lessons for future Cash & Counseling programs.

The report presents twenty-seven case stories about the experience of adults with disabilities who receive the cash option in the IndependentChoices Program. The report focuses on how "care units," composed of consumers and/or representatives, paid workers, & counselors interacted around issues of consumer directed care. Stories were analyzed for cross-cutting topics & themes such as family context of care, the meaning of independence, & the community context of care emerged in the interviews.

Families USA has released Medicaid: Good Medicine for State Economies predicting the impact state Medicaid spending will have on business activity, jobs, & wages in 2005. The report argues that extending the $10 billion in fiscal relief provided by Congress to the states last year, through enhanced Federal participation in Medicaid, through the end of fiscal year 2005 would help strengthen state economies by generating even more business activity, jobs,& wages. Includes data for every state.

This report provides a summary of the partnership development activities undertaken by the 52 Grantees that were awarded a Systems Change Grant in 2001. It describes the ways that Grantees involved consumers and public and private partners in the development of Grant applications and their plans for involving them in implementation activities. In addition, the report includes a more in-depth description of partnership involvement for nine Grantees (three from each Grant type).

The purpose of this report is to compare and contrast the fiscal year (FY) 2001 Systems Change Grantees’ goals and planned activities as identified in their Grant applications submitted to CMS. This report provides a summary of the goals of the 52 FY 2001 Grantees and representative examples of the various activities they plan to implement to help them achieve these goals. The report also includes a summary of States’ views of the strengths, challenges and barriers of their LTC systems.

Of the Real Choice Systems Change grantees awarded funding under CMS’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2001 solicitation, 20 have one or more initiatives to improve the recruitment and retention of direct service workers. This report focuses on the workforce initiatives of these 20 Grantees, with an in-depth look at 7 Grantees (AR [2 grants], KY, MT, NH, NC, VT, with whom RTI conducted site visits).