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This data note provides new information about waiting lists from KFF’s most recent survey of state Medicaid HCBS programs, including a discussion of why waiting lists are an incomplete measure of unmet need and why they are not necessarily comparable across states or over time.
In a new analysis of survey data from state Medicaid home care programs, KFF found that in most years since 2016, there have been nearly 700,000 people on waiting or interest lists for expanded home and community-based services (HCBS), with a total of 692,000 across 38 states in 2023 and waiting lists averaging three years.
In response to long-standing workforce challenges in home- and community-based services, states have reported increasing Medicaid payment rates, providing more education and training or leveraging other strategies to recruit and retain workers.
Almost every state reported increasing Medicaid payment rates for home- and community-based services to recruit and retain workers as part of their strategy to address long-standing workforce challenges, according to a new report from a survey of state officials administrating those programs.
Family caregivers played a key role in supporting people who used Medicaid home- and community-based services (HCBS) during the COVID pandemic. Many states used new pandemic-era authorities to support and pay family caregivers and maintain services in other ways amid workforce shortages and other challenges.
Drawing from KFF’s 50-state survey of state Medicaid HCBS officials, conducted between May and August of 2023, this issue brief describes how states used the PHE authorities to strengthen their HCBS programs, changes as the PHE ends, and the role of family caregivers in providing HCBS.
This policy watch explores the potential implications of ending the PHE for Medicaid HCBS programs.
About 656,000 people across the country were on state waiting lists for home and community-based services financed through Medicaid waivers in 2021, finds a new KFF analysis. But such waiting lists are an incomplete and often inaccurate measure that can both overstate and understate unmet need.
This issue brief presents the latest findings on key state policy choices about Medicaid HCBS in 2022 based on the 20th KFF survey of state officials administering Medicaid HCBS programs in all 50 states and DC. The data were collected from April through September 2022. The survey was sent to each state official responsible for overseeing the administration of HCBS benefits (e.g., home health, personal care, and services for specific populations such as people with physical disabilities), but some states submitted responses for the state overall.
This issue brief presents state-level data on Medicaid financial eligibility criteria and adoption of the major non-MAGI pathways as of January 2022. The data were collected from March through May 2022 in KFF’s survey of Medicaid state eligibility officials.
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