Kansas home care programs

Home health: the medical benefit

In Kansas, skilled home health is Home health agency services (KanCare / KMAP). It is a medical benefit: a doctor or other practitioner orders nursing, therapy or home health aide visits under a written plan of care, and the visits stop when the skilled need ends.

Only a licensed home health agency enrolled with Kansas Medicaid can bill it, and the agency's own nurses, therapists and aides make the visits.

Home care: non-medical personal care through an agency

Help with bathing, dressing, eating and household tasks is "home care" or personal care. In Kansas it is paid through the programs below rather than a separate agency personal care benefit.

Consumer-directed care: the person hires their own aide

Kansas's consumer-directed option is Self-Directed Personal Care Services. The person receiving care, or a representative, recruits, hires, trains, schedules and supervises the aide, and can let go of one. A fiscal intermediary runs payroll, taxes and background checks, so the person never handles wages directly.

This is the route most families use to be paid: Self-Directed Personal Care Services allows a relative to be hired as the paid aide. Which relatives qualify (adult children, parents of adults, spouses, legal guardians) and how a live-in caregiver is treated are set program by program.

Structured family caregiving: a paid live-in family caregiver

Kansas has no structured family caregiving program. A family caregiver is paid instead through consumer-directed care (Self-Directed Personal Care Services), by the hour, as the participant's chosen aide.

Other ways Kansas pays for care at home

Waiver in-home services: Community Support Waiver (CSW), HCBS Intellectual Disabilities and Developmental Disabilities Waiver, Home and Community Based Services for the Frail Elderly Waiver, Kansas HCBS Brain Injury Waiver, Physical Disability Waiver, and Technology Assisted Waiver. These pay for in-home supports for people who meet a nursing-home or similar level of care, often with more services than state plan personal care and, in some programs, a waiting list or enrollment cap.

PACE: Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE). One PACE organization covers medical care, a day center and home care for people 55 and over who need nursing-home level care.

State-funded: Senior Care Act (SCA). Paid from state funds outside Medicaid, for people who do not qualify for Medicaid or are waiting for it.

Which one fits

• Needs nursing, wound care, injections or therapy at home: home health (Home health agency services (KanCare / KMAP)).
• Wants to choose the aide, including a relative where allowed: Self-Directed Personal Care Services.
• Meets nursing-home level of care and needs more than personal care: Community Support Waiver (CSW), HCBS Intellectual Disabilities and Developmental Disabilities Waiver, Home and Community Based Services for the Frail Elderly Waiver, Kansas HCBS Brain Injury Waiver, Physical Disability Waiver, and Technology Assisted Waiver.