Avoidable Hospitalization Grants May Offer Opportunity for Ohio
Last month, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) solicited applications for grants to test interventions that reduce avoidable hospitalizations among long-term skilled nursing facility patients. CMS intends to award grants to entities in seven states to evaluate various interventions. The federal agency has established a number of restrictions, including that the grants cannot go to SNFs or organizations that own or operate SNFs, that a proposal must include at least 15 SNFs as partners, and that the SNFs must have an average census of at least 100 patients. The state Medicaid and survey agencies must support the application. The funding will go to the applicant organization for personnel and other costs to implement, supervise, and evaluate the interventions, which can include actual care provision. CMS also specified that the participating facilities cannot be in managed care (such as Ohio’s proposed Integrated Care Delivery System demonstration) or part of another CMS project directed at similar goals. OHCA is evaluating how best to pursue this opportunity for Ohio.