West Virginia is receiving a $5.8 million federal funding award to help qualifying long-term care patients transition back to their own homes and apartments.
The federal funding award will support West Virginia’s “Take Me Home” transition program, which aims to let residents of long-term care facilities decide the best setting for their care, U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said Thursday.
Capito, ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, said the Take Me Home program is supported by West Virginia’s Money Follows the Person grant through the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources.
The Mountain State has a high percentage of citizens who are elderly, many of whom currently reside in long-term care facilities.
“The Take Me Home transition program allows many West Virginians with long-term health care needs to decide for themselves where the best setting is to receive the services they need,” Capito said. “For many, that is their own homes and communities. This grant will give West Virginia the needed support and flexibility to help improve the quality of health care and help drive down costs for West Virginia’s residents currently living in long-term care.”
According to the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources, the Mountain State was awarded a Money Follows the Person grant by the Centers for the Medicare and Medicaid Services in 2011. West Virginia’s MFP program is called Take Me Home.
The DHR said 33 states and the District of Columbia are currently participating in the MFP demonstration. The purpose of MFP is to support state Medicaid programs in providing people with long-term care needs a greater choice of where to live and receive needed services and support.
The DHHR said each state MFP initiative consists of two parts: A transition program to identify Medicaid members living in long-term care facilities who wish to live in the community and help them do so; and a rebalancing program through which states make system-wide changes that provide Medicaid members with long-term care needs the opportunity to live and receive services in their own homes and communities.