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CMS awards grants for nursing home alternatives
Thirteen states and the District of Columbia will get more than $547 million in grants over five years to build Medicaid long-term care programs that will help keep people at home and out of institutions, says Leslie V. Norwalk, acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
The five-year demonstration project is designed to evaluate the effectiveness of programs that shift Medicaid's traditional emphasis on institutional care to a system offering greater choices that include home and community-based services.
Grants were awarded to: Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. These states expect to be able to move more than 14,000 people into community settings using these grant awards.
States receiving grants will design programs with four major objectives:
- Increase the use of home and community-based, rather than institutional, long-term care services;
- Eliminate barriers or mechanisms that prevent Medicaid-eligible individuals from receiving support for appropriate and necessary long-term services in the settings of their choice;
- Increase the ability of the state Medicaid program to assure continued provision of home and community-based long-term care services to eligible individuals who choose to move from an institutional to a community setting; and
- Ensure that procedures are in place to provide quality assurance for individuals receiving Medicaid home and community-based long-term care services and to provide for continuous quality improvement in such services.
All states were eligible to participate in the five-year demonstration program and had to commit to provide demonstration services for at least two years.
For more details about the New Freedom Initiative, of which this demonstration is part, visit the CMS web site at: www.cms.hhs.gov/NewFreedomInitiative/.
HHS provides web site on HIPAA privacy rule
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has developed a new web site that provides information on enforcement of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy rule.
The site gives consumers and healthcare providers information on HHS activities, results, and guidelines for enforcing the rule.
Additionally, the site provides information on consumers' rights to access their health information and their control of how their personal information is used or disclosed.
The site offers access to case studies by issue, such as lack of safeguards, and by covered entity. To view HHS' new web site, go to www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/enforcement/.
Thirteen states and the District of Columbia will get more than $547 million in grants over five years to build Medicaid long-term care programs that will help keep people at home and out of institutions.You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
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