Capitol Correspondence - 08.19.19

CMS Highlights 10 States with Greatest Medicaid LTSS Rebalancing

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The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) shared this announcement on a report focusing on changes in long-term supports and services (LTSS) from 2012 to 2016, highlighting 10 states that made the greatest strides towards rebalancing in that time period. LTSS includes supports for people with intellectual / developmental disabilities.

As written by CMS:

“The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released Selected Characteristics of 10 States with the Greatest Change in Long-Term Services and Supports System Balancing, 2012–2016. Each year, most states make steady, incremental progress toward rebalancing their long-term services and supports (LTSS) systems from institutional care to home and community-based services (HCBS). They achieve this rebalancing by increasing expenditures on HCBS, decreasing expenditures on institutional services, or both, resulting in a larger share of total LTSS expenditures for HCBS. This report discusses programmatic changes and economic indicators of the 10 states that made the greatest progress in rebalancing their LTSS systems between 2012 and 2016: Missouri, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Colorado, South Carolina, Illinois, Nevada, and Arkansas. While only half of the profiled states were above the national average in terms of the percentage of their LTSS spending on HCBS, the profiled states increased their HCBS share of expenditures by nearly twice as much as the national average between 2012 and 2016.