Illinois

The AARP Public Policy Institute released a qualitative report to summarize the issues Illinois caregivers and older adults faced finding local LTSS resources. The report includes assessments of the quality of care accessed, supplemented by the first-person comments, and observations of the interviewees. The key themes outlined in the report include onset of illness and recognition of need for care, search for help, receipt of care, and promising policies and practices for improving the LTSS experience.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, through CMS, awarded approximately $25 million in planning grants to five new states and territories to expand access to home and community-based services through Medicaid’s Money Follows the Person (MFP) demonstration program. With these awards, 41 states and territories across the country will now participate in MFP. Awards of up to $5 million have been granted to Illinois, Kansas, and New Hampshire, as well as for American Samoa and Puerto Rico. This is the first time MFP grants have been made available to territories. These awards will support the early planning phase for their MFP programs.

ACL has released a new brief, Leveraging Innovation, Collaboration, and Data with Assistive Technology to Reduce Social Isolation and Loneliness: Success Story from Illinois. This brief highlights a model and innovative partnership at both the federal and state levels that successfully purchased and distributed technology devices to older adults and people with disabilities served by local agencies in order to reduce social isolation and loneliness.

Paula Basta, M.Div., Director, Illinois Department on Aging and ADvancing States Member, wrote a guest blog post for ACL about the unique challenges of LGBTQ+ older adults. The blog post highlights the specific struggles this population is facing in Illinios regarding descrimination, representation in aging services, chronic and mental health, and securing access to care, as well as touches on some inititiaves that are being developed to address these issues.

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.

This paper focuses on how state-funded home and community-based services programs can support low-income older adults. It highlights promising practices that support maximum independence for low-income older adults and/or people with physical disabilities and their family caregivers. The paper explores programs across nine states, including Washington state’s emerging innovation: the Medicaid Transformation demonstration.

This paper explores how state MLTSS programs interact with federal LTSS initiatives. It examines this interaction in four states: Illinois, Iowa, New York, and Ohio. It specifically focuses on the the interaction of these states' MLTSS programs with the Money Follows the Person (MFP) demonstration, the Balancing Incentive Program, the Health Home State Plan Option, and the Financial Alignment Initiative (FAI).

This report documents the nationwide housing affordability crisis experienced by people with disabilities. The report discusses how in 2016, millions of adults with disabilities living solely on Supplemental Security Income (SSI) found that renting even a modest unit in their community would require nearly all of their monthly income. The report offers policy recommendations to address this crisis.

This report presents the findings and conclusions of this national evaluation of the MFP demonstration. The MFP Rebalancing Demonstration program launched more than nine years ago. There are 44 grantee states, and as of the end of calendar year 2015, grantee states had transitioned a total of 63,337 Medicaid beneficiaries from long-term institutional care to community residences and home and community-based LTSS.

For individuals who receive services from both Medicare and Medicaid, care is often fragmented across a wide array of medical, behavioral health, and long-term care providers. Medicare and Medicaid offer otherwise uncoordinated systems of care with different eligibility criteria, benefits, provider networks, and enrollment processes. This issue brief describes key features of effective integrated care programs and presents top policy considerations driving state investment in these programs.