The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) have announced the availability of up to $165 million in supplemental funding to states currently operating Money Follows the Person (MFP) demonstration programs. This funding will help state Medicaid programs jump-start efforts to transition individuals with disabilities and older adults from institutions and nursing facilities to home and community-based settings of their choosing.

This action delivers on the Administration’s commitment to transform Medicaid by fostering increased state flexibility and innovation and to ensure safety and quality for beneficiaries.

Each eligible state (including Pennsylvania) can 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 grantee states that currently operate a MFP-funded transition program, with additional information on this funding opportunity.

For more information, please visit this web page.

Additionally, CMS has released a new report on community transitions that occurred under the Money Follows the Person (MFP) program from 2008 to the end of 2019. The report highlights that during this time, states transitioned 101,540 people to community living through MFP. In the most recent year (2019), MFP grantee states transitioned a total of 4,173 individuals. The report includes additional information on transitions broken down by population and state.

Read the full report.