Louisiana Holding Statewide Meetings on Tiered Waiver Service Delivery Approach

According to a recent news release, “Beginning in October 2016, the Office for Citizens with Developmental Disabilities conducted a screening initiative to determine the urgency of need of those individuals who were on the Registry. To date, more than 9,400 of those individuals have been screened. The screening initiative uses a nationally accepted best practice and gave the agency an understanding of the needs of each individual on the list.

The screening process identified people who would benefit from non-waiver services and referred those people to the appropriate service providers. Typically, these services are less costly than the benefits offered under the NOW waiver.  Individuals who do not need services immediately will remain on the list in their proper order.”

“To address the existing number of individuals on the waiting list, it would cost nearly $832 million in new state and federal dollars,” said LDH deputy secretary Michelle Alletto. “Knowing those dollars would likely not be available in the near term; our agency took an innovative approach to improve services by developing a new tiered waiver system. By making the appropriate services available to people at the right time in their lives, we can offer services to more people while best utilizing our limited dollars.”

Mark A. Thomas, assistant secretary for the Office for Citizens with Developmental Disabilities said his staff worked with stakeholders representing the Developmental Disabilities Council, Families Helping Families, ARC of Louisiana, and individuals and families to develop this new approach to getting people the services they need when they need them.

“We call this a tiered waiver service delivery system,” said Thomas. “We believe this new system is a comprehensive plan to assist individuals and family members who have the most urgent and emergent needs, and who have been waiting for services for a long time.”