The Right Supports at the Right Time: How Money Follows the Person Programs Are Supporting Diverse Populations in the Community
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The Right Supports at the Right Time: How Money Follows the Person Programs Are Supporting Diverse Populations in the Community

The National Evaluation of the Money Follows the Person (MFP) Demonstration Grant Program, Reports from the Field #16
Published: Apr 22, 2015
Publisher: Cambridge, MA: Mathematica Policy Research
Health Disability Long-Term Services and Supports Medicaid and CHIP Advisory Services Research and Evaluation Technical Assistance Evaluation Design Rapid Cycle Evaluation
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Associated Project

Research and Evaluation of the Money Follows the Person (MFP) Demonstration Grants

Time frame: 2007-2017

Prepared for:

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

Authors

Noelle Denny-Brown

Brynn Hagen

Ciara Bradnan

Susan Williams

Key Findings
The six MFP grantees this study highlights offer several lessons that can help other states enhance their program models to better serve people with diverse support needs:  
  • First, thorough identification of a person’s needs and preferences early in the transition process is essential to facilitate timely linkages to services in the community and avoid reinstitutionalization.
  • Second, the federal funding made available to MFP grantees gives states the ability to test new service innovations on a small scale that help meet participants’ support needs in the community; states that performed better on key outcome measures made good use of this flexibility to ensure that all participants received appropriate and timely supports in the community.
  • Third, quality monitoring systems are key to track participants’ outcomes in the community. Several states included in this study use the knowledge gained from its evaluation of quality monitoring data to improve service delivery for participants.
  • Finally, MFP programs in these states formed strong partnerships with stakeholders, which led to close coordination in service delivery and propelled system transformation efforts forward.

The Money Follows the Person (MFP) demonstration supports states’ efforts to help Medicaid beneficiaries living in long-term care facilities transition back to the community. People exiting long-term care facilities need diverse types of long-term services and supports to relocate to a residential setting and live successfully in the community. MFP grantees are using the funds made available by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to expand the mix of services to better meet people’s support needs during their first year in the community.

This report examines how six MFP grantees are serving populations with diverse needs in the community and the factors that have contributed to their strong performance on key outcome measures. The six states were selected based on having scored higher—relative to other state MFP grantees—on the number of people transitioned, rates of reinstitutionalization, changes in self-reported quality of life, and other indicators for each of the four populations the MFP programs targeted: older adults and people with physical disabilities who transition from nursing homes, people with intellectual disabilities, and people with mental illness.

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