The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced $165 million in supplemental funding to states currently operating Money Follows the Person (MFP) demonstration programs. South Dakota is one of 33 states eligible to receive funding. 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 Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) capacity. Allowable expenditures include:
- 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.
States may also 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. States may request this through supplemental budget requests on a rolling basis through June 30, 2021.
More information on the federal MFP program is available at here. Information on South Dakota’s MFP program is available at on the DSS website.
