State Of New Jersey Medicaid Waiver Home Care Programs

CT.Gov, Jan 06, 2006

New Jersey’s Aging and Community Services Division is in the state’s Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS). The division is the designated state unit on aging and receives and distributes the OAA funding, oversees the area agencies on aging, and runs the usual OAA programs.

The division also conducts preadmission screening for long-term care and administers Medicaid waiver home care programs. The separate Department of Human Services determines financial eligibility and makes the payments for these waiver programs. The division administers a nursing facility transition, state-funded home care, and assisted living programs; elderly congregate housing services; a statewide respite care program; an Alzheimer’s adult day care program; a public guardian program; and elderly protective services. It licenses adult day care centers. It also operates an Aging and Disability Resource Connection service (a single point of entry for both elderly and younger disabled people) and engages in community nutrition and wellness education.

A Commission on Aging, whose members are appointed by the governor, is also located in the division to advise it and to advocate for the elderly. The division also has historically contained the Office of the Ombudsman for the Institutionalized Elderly, but this is being moved to an independent Public Advocates’ Office.

The structural organization of elder services has had a long history in New Jersey, actually preceding the federal Older Americans Act. In 1957 an Office on Aging was created in the Governor’s Office. Then it became a division of the Department of Community Affairs. Then the division was moved to its current location at the Department of Health and Senior Services, according to Nancy Day, the division’s director. In its current location, the division is responsible to some extent for the Medicaid waiver and state-funded home care programs including preadmission screening, but the Department of Human Services, which is the single designated state Medicaid agency still does financial eligibility and payments.

Other DHSS divisions regulate long-term care, set rates for nursing facilities, and administer the state’s pharmaceutical assistance program for elderly and disabled people. A personal care assistant program is still in the Department of Human Services because less than 51% of the people in the program are elderly, according to Day.