CMS Announces $5M for New York's Money Follows the Person Program

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has announced the availability of up to $165 million in supplemental funding to states currently operating Money Follows the Person (MFP) demonstration programs. New York will receive approximately $5 million of this funding to help to transition individuals with disabilities and older adults from institutions and nursing facilities to home and community-based settings of their choosing.

According to a new CMS report, MFP state grantees have transitioned 101,540 Medicaid beneficiaries from institutional care to home and community-based services (HCBS) since the program started in 2007. However, last year, only 4,173 Medicaid beneficiaries were transitioned under the MFP program, a 46 percent decrease from 2018.

Each state is eligible to receive up to $5 million in supplemental funding for planning and capacity building activities to accelerate long term care system transformation design and implementation, and to expand HCBS capacity, such as:

• Assessing HCBS system capacity and determining the extent to which additional providers and/or services might be needed;
• Assessing institutional capacity and determining the extent to which the state could reduce this capacity and transition impacted individuals to more integrated settings;
• Provider and direct service worker recruitment, education, training, technical assistance, and quality improvement activities, including training people with disabilities to become direct service workers;
• Caregiver training and education;
• Assessing and implementing changes to reimbursement rates and payment methodologies to expand HCBS provider capacity and/or improve HCBS and/or institutional service quality;
• Building Medicaid-housing partnerships to facilitate access to affordable and accessible housing for Medicaid beneficiaries with disabilities and older adults; and
• Diversion strategies to prevent nursing facility admission.

In addition, states could use this funding opportunity to support HCBS planning and capacity building activities in direct response to the COVID-19 public health emergency, such as to plan and implement the use of telehealth for nursing facility transition activities that would normally be conducted in person or to redesign service delivery models to reduce the risk of COVID-19 infection among MFP participants.

Supplemental budget requests under this funding opportunity will be accepted on a rolling basis through June 30, 2021. CMS will provide all eligible state grantees that currently operate an MFP-funded transition program with additional information on this funding opportunity.

More information about the MFP program is available here.

Contact: Meg Carr Everett, meverett@leadingageny.org, 518-929-9342