CLIENTS
LTSS Assessment Redesign
The Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing (HCPF) has contracted with HCBS Strategies to develop a new process for assessing the need for long term supports and services (LTSS).
The project has the following stages:
- Understanding how Colorado’s current LTSS assessment processes work, including a review of the tools used across the State and local departments and meetings with these entities.
- Develop a document that identifies how the new assessment process can support Colorado’s home and community-based services (HCBS) systems change efforts (formerly the white paper).
- Selecting the tool or tools that will serve as the basis of the new assessment process.
- Customizing the tool or tools to meet Colorado’s unique needs.
- Piloting the tool to understand the impact on eligibility determinations.
- Developing a plan for implementing the new tool and related processes.
The operational review mentioned in Step 1 has been complete, and during this process it was found that there are far more initiatives working towards systems change across the State than originally anticipated. As a result, the timing of the white paper (Step 2) was moved forward and refocused to discuss how the new assessment process might support proposed systems change efforts. As a result, the Department has decided on the tools that they will be using as models to develop their own tool (Step 3), and the draft assessment tool has been developed (Step 4). This modular assessment tool has been customized to meet the specific needs of Colorado and requirements from the HCBS Final Rule, and includes elements from the federal FASI (formerly CARE) tool and Minnesota’s MnCHOICES, which HCBS Strategies helped develop. The tool has gone through rigorous review with the State and stakeholders over the course of dozens of meetings. The pilot (Step 5) will occur when a final iteration of the FASI tool is available (anticipated date of late 2016).
For more information, please visit the blog at: http://coassessment.blogspot.com/
Developing an Integrated Implementation Plan for Statewide Long Term Services and Supports
HCBS Strategies is currently working with the Department of Health Care Policy and Financing (HCPF) on the development and execution of an integrated plan for statewide LTSS. Currently, Colorado has over 15 LTSS enhancement and expansion projects that are co-occurring, many of which overlap. There has been little coordination across these projects, and Colorado has contracted with HCBS Strategies to develop an integrated implementation plan. This plan has been proposed to include descriptions of each of the efforts, a detailed implementation timeline, steps for coordinating the implementation of these efforts to minimize duplication, and the establishment of several workgroups to coordinate ongoing efforts.