MARYLAND
Grant Information
- Name of Grantee
- Department of Mental Health and Hygiene
- Title of Grant
- Increasing Access, Service Availability, and Quality
in Maryland's LongTerm Care System
- Type of Grant
- Real Choice Systems Change
- Amount of Grant
- $1,025,000
- Year Original Funding Received
- 2001
- Amount of Supplemental Grant
-
- $360,000
- Supplemental Award Received
-
- 2002
Contact Information
Mark Leeds, Director
201 West Preston St., Room 123
Baltimore, MD 21201
4107676770
leedsm@dhmh.state.md.us
Subcontractor(s)
To be determined by an RFP process in the first year of the grant.
Target Population(s)
People of all ages with disabilities. One grant initiative is designed specifically for children with serious emotional disturbances.
Goals
- Permanently increase the availability of attendant care services.
- Provide information and assistance to consumers in acute care hospitals to aid decisionmaking and assist with transitions back to the community.
- Assess the quality of communitybased longterm care services and use that information to focus on quality improvement efforts in the future.
- Improve communitybased service delivery to children with serious emotional disturbances.
Activities
- Develop a pilot project to provide outreach to persons in hospitals to inform them of communitybased longterm care options to prevent unnecessary institutional placement. The project will include working with a hospital discharge planner to inform individuals of communitybased services and programs at the point of discharge from the hospital. This initiative also includes funding for the development of educational materials to inform individuals about communitybased programs in Maryland.
- Target efforts to increase the community longterm care workforce. This includes hosting provider job fairs across the state targeted to direct care workers where technical assistance with completion of the provider applications and specific qualifications can be provided.
- Develop a capitated demonstration program to better serve children with serious emotional disturbances (SED).
- Develop performance measures for communitybased longterm care programs. This includes development and implementation of consumer satisfaction surveys for Maryland's communitybased programs.
Abstract
The Real Choice Systems Change Grant will build on Maryland's commitment to providing home and communitybased services to individuals in the community. The funding will enable Maryland to address a number of issues in delivering longterm care services. Maryland is in the process of developing a Consumer Advisory Board (CAB) that builds on the consumer workgroup established to develop the Real Choice Systems Change grant initiatives in the summer of 2001. The CAB will offer advice and recommendations in the process of the implementation of the grant initiatives. The CAB will work collaboratively with the other Maryland grant awardees.
The grant includes four initiatives:
- Implementation of a pilot project to provide outreach and information to persons of all ages with disabilities in acute care hospitals to ensure that they have comprehensive information about communitybased longterm care options and how to access them, particularly when planning for discharge from acute care settings.
- Focus on implementing activities designed to attract and retain longterm care direct care workers and mitigate the longterm care worker shortage.
- Development and implementation of a managed care demonstration program to provide coordinated longterm care services to children with SED who would otherwise likely "fall through the system cracks" and languish in longterm care facilities or psychiatric hospitals. Development and implementation oversight would be grantfunded. Services would be statefunded.
- Development of quality indicators for longterm care services, a comprehensive satisfaction survey, and survey approach to be administered to home and community waiver participants and establishment of a quality measurement and improvement process that would be maintained after the grant period concludes.