Connecticut will collect as much as $72.8 million in federal funding to support Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s plan to expand homecare services for seniors and adults with disabilities, the governor says.
Malloy’s funding announcement Tuesday was part of an unveiling of a more detailed strategic plan to rebalance the state’s long-term care services by moving residents out of more costly institutional care settings, to home care settings.
The initiative, which is being supported by some in the business community, is seen as a way to reduce health care costs, which eat up a large portion of the state and federal budgets.
The federal funding will be combined with a $13 million state investment.
The strategic plan, which was coordinated by the Department of Social Services (DSS), represents over a year’s work by consumers, advocates, home care and other service providers, the nursing home industry, and the state.
It uses census and demographic data to develop town-by-town projections for long-term care needs and will be used to help focus services in specific areas, enlist local planning, and help nursing home operators adapt to meeting anticipated demand.
The plan calls for:
• connecting the public to information about long-term care services and supports;
• increasing the number of transitions of long-term nursing home residents to the community;
• closing service gaps, improving existing services, and identifying new services;
• ensuring quality of care;
• building capacity in the community workforce to sustain rebalancing goals;
• focusing on housing and transportation supports; and
• helping transform nursing facilities into community-based continuing care providers serving a range of needs.
Officials say the intent is to implement a strategic, coordinated approach to reducing nursing beds where projections indicate that they will not be needed, and ensuring nursing facilities diversify their services to reflect the home care trends. A request for proposals to help nursing facilities “rightsize” by diversifying their business models is under development and will be released in the coming weeks.
Up to $72.8 million in Medicaid reimbursement was approved by the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) under the State Balancing Incentives Payment Program.
Connecticut will receive an enhanced match rate of 2 percent for non-institutional long-term services and supports funded under Medicaid from this January through September 2015, which boosts the federal reimbursement rate to 52 percent in this area.
Connecticut’s Medicaid spending remains weighted toward institutional settings. In fiscal 2012, 56 percent of long-term care clients were living in the community, but their costs represented only 41 percent of all long-term service expenditures.
