Maine

Maine's Real Choice Systems Change Initiative has done work in four major areas: Data integration, Quality, Access and Person-Centered Services. This paper reports on the accomplishments at the conclusion of Quality Choices I. Report sections include: Background, Goals and Objectives, Project Selection, Pre-Design Planning, System Design, Challenges, Lessons Learned, Next Steps and Sustainability. The appendices offer examples of Critical Event Intake & Triage Forms plus a BEAS Event Form.

This report provides summary information on the performance of Maine’s home and community based care system. The data can be used to identify areas where the system is working and people are satisfied and also points to areas where further analysis would be helpful. The quality indicators are for the following programs: Older Adults and Adults with Disabilities, Adults with Physical Disabilities - Who Self Direct and Adults with Mental Retardation/Autism.

This guide was prepared by Maine’s Work Group for Community-Based Living in response to the 1999 Olmstead Supreme Court decision. The work group submits this Roadmap as an interdepartmental approach for improving home and community services for people with disabilities. Section topics include: advocacy, integrated services, using data, service coordination, direct-care workers, improving quality, housing, transportation, and employment.

In recent years, states have been trying to shift resources from institutional to home and community based long-term care services. This report examines \"transition\" and \"diversion\" policies and practices in eight states. It provides a sense of what state Medicaid programs are doing or could be doing to promote diversion.

This new interactive online tool provides the latest key data for each state’s Medicaid program and the population it serves, allowing for easy comparisons of one state to any other state or to the nation as a whole, on a selection of important indicators. Utilizing figures from the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured and drawn directly from statehealthfacts.org, this tool provides customized figures and tables that can be easily printed as fact sheets, emailed or saved.

The 50-state annual survey of budget conditions and Medicaid cost containment actions in FY2005-06 shows that all states implemented and planned more Medicaid cost-containment actions, but are also implementing expansions as the gap between Medicaid spending growth and state tax revenue narrowed.

This newly released biennial study verifies that low-income people with disabilities are experiencing a national housing affordability crisis. The Priced Out in 2004 study compares the monthly SSI income of more than 4 million Americans with disabilities to the fair market rental rates for efficiencies and modest one-bedroom apartments in every housing market in the country. Review more facts, figures and examples about housing and the national rent increases which greatly exceed SSI Benefits.

The Quality Choices for Maine project was conducted from 2001-2004. This report focuses on Access to Services, one part of the three-year RCSC Quality Grant. The specific housing related goal was “to improve access to community housing for people with disabilities of all types.” Project activities were overseen by the Access to Services Technical Assistance Group and a variety of stakeholders. Read the activity summaries, lessons learned and recommendations on how to sustain the work.

This is the fifth national survey of the direct-care workforce published by the National Clearinghouse on the Direct Care Workforce. It examines public policy actions taken by states to strengthen the direct-care workforce, and updates information collected in prior surveys. Responses were received from 38 states, representing a 76 percent return rate. The report contains data tables with survey results and details national initiatives pertaining to the direct care workforce.

Although consumer direction is a growing trend in publicly supported HCBS programs across the states, we know relatively little about how this approach is implemented in the states. This national study aims to describe the role of consumer direction in publicly funded family caregiver support services and HCBS programs with a family caregiving component. This report addresses three questions with the intent of informing policy discussions.