Release of the Medicaid LTSS Annual Expenditures Report and Section 1915(c) Waiver Programs Annual Expenditures and Beneficiaries Report

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Release of the Medicaid LTSS Annual Expenditures Report and Section 1915(c) Waiver Programs Annual Expenditures and Beneficiaries Report

Last week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released the Medicaid LTSS Annual Expenditures Report for Federal Fiscal Year (FFY) 2020 and Medicaid Section 1915(c) Waiver Programs Annual Expenditures and Beneficiaries Report, Analysis of CMS 372 Annual Reports for 2018-2019. These reports discuss the long-term services and supports (LTSS) rebalancing trends and patterns in expenditures for different home and community-based services (HCBS) and institutional care, nationally and across states.

Some of the highlights from these reports include:

• The percentage of HCBS expenditures comprising total Medicaid LTSS expenditures has steadily increased over the last three decades, but it has slowed in recent years. The U.S. total surpassed the long-standing benchmark of 50 percent of LTSS expenditures in FY 2013 and has remained higher than 50 percent since then, reaching 62.5 percent in FY 2020. This was an all-time high and represented a 3.9 percentage point increase from FY 2019.
• Nationally, approximately 1.9 million individuals participated in section 1915(c) waiver programs in 2019, representing a 5.2 percent increase from the prior year. In 2019, average section 1915(c) waiver program expenditures per participant per year were $30,063, an increase of 1 percent over 2018.