Medicaid Coverage of Nursing Care in Tennessee: Prudent, Rationing or Inevitable Reality?

In an article published yesterday in the Washington Post, Guy Gugliotta writes about a new Medicaid policy in Tennessee, which seeks more efficient alignment between reimbursement and cost settings (my interpretation). 

This is very likely an important bellwether of state Medicaid policy that will be repeated in some fashion or other in other states, and it has unsurprisingly been met with a fair amount of controversy and concern.

Operating under a Section 1115 waiver from CMS, TennCare is the State of Tennessee’s Medicaid program, providing health care for 1.2 million with an annual budget of $8 billion. TennCare utilizes a managed care model that extends coverage to additional populations who would not otherwise be Medicaid eligible, while seeking to maintain a consistent level of quality care.  Tennessee has one of the oldest Medicaid managed care programs in the country, having begun on January 1, 1994. It is the only program in the nation to enroll the entire state Medicaid population in managed care.

On June 20th of this year TennCare released a new Nursing Facility Level of Care Guide outlining programmatic changes to its CHOICES program, which, “are designed to target Nursing Facility services to persons with higher acuity of need, while simultaneously making Home and Community Based Services more broadly available.”  This is the subject of the above-referenced article.

With this initiative TennCare seeks to increase the Nursing Facility Level of Care criteria necessary for Medicaid eligibility to a level it believes to be more in line with criteria used in other states while providing a less costly benefit for those individuals who will no longer qualify under the new criteria.  The new criteria are being applied prospectively, so no one currently qualifying for nursing care will be affected.

Under the new eligibility criteria three groups are established:
Group 1: Individuals eligible to receive care in a nursing
                  facility (NF) and requesting care in a NF;
Group 2: Individuals eligible to receive care in a NF but
                   requesting home and community-based services
                   (HCBS) in lieu of receiving care in a NF; and
Group 3: Individuals not eligible to receive care in a NF,
                   but “at risk” of NF placement and requesting
                   HCBS in the TennCare CHOICES program.

Group 3 is the population of concern and being debated from a policy perspective.  These are individuals that may have qualified for nursing care coverage under previous criteria and been eligible for HCBS cost coverage at a level commensurate with the cost of coverage in a NF.  Now the annual benefits available to this population will be $15,000.

From a consumer advocacy perspective the concern is that many individuals in Group 3 will not receive adequate services and care because the $15,000 benefit is not sufficient.  From a state policy perspective the concern is trying to allocate finite resources in a fashion where those individuals with the greatest need are afforded the ability to receive care that meets those needs.  In short, pub patrons, welcome to Healthcare Public Policy in the 21st Century.

From a pragmatic vantage, the initiative in Tennessee has very important ramifications for providers of community-based services and post-acute/long-term care.  This is an initiative that is certain to hasten the trend toward HCBS and away from care in institutional settings.  It is a threat to projected demand for long-term care in NF settings – and it is a threat to projected reimbursement levels available to HCBS providers under Medicaid.

It seems to me that any healthcare provider wishing to include the Medicaid population in its targeted market in the future look now at how to integrate BOTH NF-based care AND HCBS in its care continuum if it wishes to be economically viable and sustainable.  What do you think?

Cheers, 
~ Sparky