Functional Assessment Tools for Medicaid Long-Term Services and Supports

States use functional assessment tools to collect information on applicants’ health status and needs in order to assess their functional eligibility for Medicaid-covered long-term services and supports. However, variation and a lack of transparency regarding assessment processes and measures across states makes it difficult to evaluate how well Medicaid programs are meeting beneficiaries’ needs. This presentation discusses a MACPAC-commissioned functional assessment tool inventory carried out by NORC at the University of Chicago. A key finding of this work is that 124 different tools are currently in use across the 50 states and the District of Columbia.