This first brief, Advancing Access to Medicaid Home and Community-Based Services: Key Issues Based on a Working Group Discussion with Medicaid Experts, highlights key strategies to address financing, program administration and community workforce challenges that key experts, federal and state officials and advocates believe must be overcome to expand access to home and community-based services (HCBS). Among the key ideas drawn from a working group discussion at the Foundation are the benefits of:

• providing additional federal financing to states to provide Medicaid HCBS and to administer these benefits;
• simplifying the process for states to provide HCBS;
• increasing Medicaid income-eligibility and resource limits for HCBS and expediting program eligibility determinations; and
• devoting greater attention to increasing capacity in the community and long-term care workforce development, including wages, training and benefits.