Reports

This report presents information aggregated from 13 F2F HICs and provides an early indication of the extent and importance of the activities of these critical family centers. The data indicates that F2F HICs are steadily increasing their capacity to document what they do. Both families and professionals frequently seek expertise and assistance from F2F HICs. The most common concerns reported relate to needs for adequate health care financing and links to community resources.

This report provides an overview of the NFT initiatives implemented by 18 of the FY ‘01 and FY ‘02 Systems Change Grantees. It describes their differing approaches to nursing facility diversion and/or transition within a framework of the key steps needed to create programs that are integrated into a state’s LTC system. This report also identifies the transition challenges and policy issues states and ILCs are facing, and discusses the implications for moving forward with rebalancing efforts.

Medicaid is the major public payer of community services and supports for working age adults with serious mental illnesses. This handbook explains how existing Medicaid options and waivers are used by states to finance a broad range of community services and supports for adults with serious mental illnesses, and demonstrates what aspects of state-of-the art community services and supports for this population are funded by Medicaid.

The 2004 Consumer Direction Initiative Summit convened 79 recipients of mental health, addiction services, families, policymakers, and providers to develop recommendations for SAMHSA’s next steps towards fostering consumer-directed approaches in behavioral health care services for people with substance use disorders, mental illnesses and children with serious emotional disturbances. The report from the summit reviews issues raised in working papers and at the meeting.

In 2001, CMS worked with state agency associations to initiate the National Quality Inventory Project (NQIP) with a goal to obtain baseline information about state HCBS waiver program QA/I systems. Through this project an extensive survey of state QA/I systems was conducted. This report describes NQIP, summarizes and discusses the results of this first-time, nationwide systematic survey of state waiver program QA/I systems. The report also includes recommendations for CMS follow-up.

The purpose of this 2001 Real Choice System Change grant project is to review personal assistance services policies across departments and programs to identify unnecessary inconsistencies and opportunities to maximize consumer choice and control. This comparative analysis identifies opportunities for increasing consumer choice and control across Maine’s personal assistance services (PAS) program and offers additional findings and recommendations.

This report is from a designated mini-conference event by the 2005 White House Conference on Aging (WHCoA). Its purpose was to provide the full WHCoA Policy Committee with recommendations specific to long-term care that could be considered for incorporation into its final policy recommendations to the President and Congress. The report contains final recommendations in three areas: Economic Security & Long-Term Care Financing, Health and Independence and Supportive Services.

Long term care reform is happening across the nation and some states are using systems change as an opportunity to better coordinate across aging and disability networks. Using the HHS framework as a guide, this paper examines promising practices in LTC reform in four states: Oregon, South Carolina, Vermont, and Wisconsin. As part of our examination of systems change in these states, we will consider how their LTC reform efforts have impacted collaboration across aging and disability networks.

This paper from NGA includes a number of potential short-run policy changes as well as long-run structural changes to improve the US health care system. The policies outlined do not represent comprehensive reform but instead 5 linking objectives: Reforming Medicaid; Enhancing Quality & Reducing Costs in the Overall Health Care System; Strengthening Employer-Based & Other Forms of Private Health Care Coverage; Slowing the Growth of Medicaid LTC; State Contribution to the Medicare Drug Benefit.

Informal family assistance is often a key factor in determining whether a person with a disability can live in a community setting. However, the practice of paying relatives as caregivers remains controversial. This article reports findings from the Cash and Counseling Demonstration and Evaluation (CCDE) in Arkansas, in which consumers receive a cash allowance to purchase personal assistance services. The article appeared in Marriage and Family Review, Vol. 1, No. 1/2