Money Follows the Person

July 9, 2007

DESCRIPTION

Money Follows the Person (MFP) is a system of flexible financing for long-term services and supports that enables available Medicaid funds to move with an individual from an institutional setting, such as a nursing facility or other institution to a home.

BACKGROUND

An institutional bias currently exists in New Mexico in that Medicaid offers institutional services as an entitlement while home and community-based services are optional. New Mexico is addressing this bias by incorporating the Money Follows the Person rebalancing initiatives in the State’s Coordination of Long Term Services (CoLTS) program, scheduled for implementation on July 1, 2008. By incorporating MFP within the CoLTS program, home and community-based services will be as readily available as nursing facility services for populations enrolled in CoLTS. The MFP initiatives will enable Medicaid funds used for a person’s long-term care services to follow the person from a nursing facility or other institution into the community to be expended for home and community-based services, thereby removing the institutional bias.

New Mexico is committed to building and maintaining a MFP system within the CoLTS program that provides accessible home and community-based options, offers easy access to choice of culturally responsive, appropriate, and quality long-term services, and empowers people to live independently, productively, and with dignity. The MFP system gives individuals increased choice about where they want to live. The MFP model improves both the quality of life and services for people with disabilities and elders, is a more cost-effective use of long-term service funds, and furthers New Mexico's rebalancing efforts.

VISION

New Mexico’s vision for a comprehensive MFP program within CoLTS is that all individuals residing in a New Mexico nursing facility or other institution will have the opportunity to live in a safe and healthy environment in the community, if that is their choice.

MISSION

To incorporate MFP within CoLTS, when implemented on July 1, 2008. CoLTS is the vehicle through which flexible financing of long-term services and support will be utilized to enable available Medicaid funds to move with an individual from nursing facility or other institutional services to home and community-based services, thereby removing the institutional bias.

Until CoLTS is implemented in 2008, the Aging and Long-Term Service Department’s ombudsman program is identifying nursing home residents who want to move from the nursing facility to home and community based services, and helping them to transition to home and community-based services through the Disabled and Elderly Waiver Reintegration program.

When CoLTS (incorporating MFP) is implemented, the basic goals of the MFP model will apply, as follows:

• Assure emphasis on consumer choice and consumer control; 

• Establish a process for identification of people who are in nursing facilities or other institutional settings who indicate they want community living; 

• Establish a transition program to move people from nursing facilities to community placements which includes appropriate community transition services; 

• Utilize the ombudsman prior to CoLTS implementation and, following CoLTS implementation, ombudsman and relocation specialists to facilitate community integration;  

• Develop, with consumer input, effective Long-Term Services and Supports Community Integration Indicators to track and evaluate MFP outcomes; 

• Assure meaningful consumer input, including people with disabilities and other stakeholders, during the design and implementation of MFP as a part of CoLTS;  

• Assure that the linkage to long-term services will be seamless; and

• Coordinate with consumers, including people with disabilities and other stakeholders, to expand availability of affordable and accessible housing, and expand and sustain a viable community attendant workforce.