Connecticut makes Medicaid money available for community-based mental health services

From the Stamford Plus Magazine:

Governor M. Jodi Rell March 31 announced that beginning April 1, Medicaid funding will become available to support community-based services to help people with serious mental illness avoid long stays in Connecticut nursing homes.

Governor Rell noted that the program is one of only four in the nation approved under a special Medicaid waiver – another example of how the state is using innovative strategies to improve access to care while simultaneously increasing federal revenue.

“Essentially, this initiative will allow Connecticut to support community-based mental health services with Medicaid dollars – money that previously had only paid for a person’s stay in a nursing home,” Governor Rell said. “We’re delighted to offer community-based care as a means of reducing the number of people with serious mental illness in nursing homes. This is tangible progress on an important issue.

“We are also pleased to have this new federal revenue source at a time when the state is working so hard to make ends meet,” the Governor said.

“The collaboration between Connecticut’s departments of Social Services and Mental Health and Addiction Services is paying dividends for people with disabilities who need community services and for taxpayers – and that’s good government at work.”

Thomas A. Kirk, Jr., Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, said, “We’ve decided to call this the ‘WISE’ program – for Working for Integration, Support and Empowerment, because it will empower people
with psychiatric disabilities and sustain them within naturally occurring community supports. By diverting and discharging people with serious mental illness from nursing homes into rehabilitative care in the community, we’re setting them on the road to recovery.

"As part of our planning for the waiver program, we assessed hundreds of nursing home residents,” Commissioner Kirk said. “Over and over again, they would ask us to help them return to community living – and now we can enable them to live their dreams. We’re also helping to bring a new source of federal funds to our community service provider network.”

The WISE program is based on an exemption to federal regulations known as a Home and Community Based Services waiver. The waiver was granted by the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services through the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The WISE program is part of a larger effort within the state to re-balance care by placing more emphasis on serving people in community settings rather than institutions. The WISE program is linked to another DSS initiative called Money Follows the Person (MFP), which is focused on seniors with a broad range of disabling conditions who have been in nursing homes for more than 6 months. MFP is expected to serve about 700 individuals in the next three years.