PEER Committee Releases Report on Personal Care Assistants

The Joint Legislative PEER Committee is releasing its report titled Role of Personal Care Attendants in the Delivery of Services through the Medicaid Elderly and Disabled Waiver Program.

Some of the Committee’s major findings include:

• Providing personal care services through Medicaid is a more cost-efficient option for states, as it allows more individuals to remain in their homes and communities rather than in an institutional setting.  According to the AARP, in 2017, the median annual cost of a nursing facility was $97,455 for a private room and $87,600 for a shared room in comparison to a median annual cost of $18,200 for adult day services.

• As of October 29, 2019, there were 19,795 personal care attendants available to serve participants in the Division of Medicaid (DOM) Elderly and Disabled Waiver program, at a FY 2017 cost of $217,933,521. According to DOM staff, a maximum of 17,800 waiver participants can be served at any one single point in time.

• Representatives of home care provider agencies raised multiple concerns regarding the provision of personal care services funded through the Elderly and Disabled Waiver program. PEER determined that several of the concerns were valid, such as a decrease in reimbursement rates and challenges in recertification of Certified Nurse Aides.

• PEER sought to identify any potential solutions that could be implemented to improve the delivery of personal care services based on the concerns raised by the home care provider agency representatives.  The Division of Medicaid and Mississippi State Department of Health have taken positive steps to address the representatives’ concerns.

The full report can be read here.

Release from the Joint Legislative PEER Committee.