Arizona Nursing Home Medicaid

ALTCS is the pathway into nursing-facility Medicaid in Arizona. AHCCCS describes the program as serving people who need nursing-facility level of care, whether that care happens inside an institution or through home- and community-based services — so an eligible member doesn't have to actually be living in a nursing home. Whatever the setting, an applicant needing nursing-facility coverage still has to clear both the medical eligibility review and the financial application.

The key medical gatekeeper is AHCCCS's pre-admission screening, known as PAS. Under that policy, someone qualifies for ALTCS institutional or home-and-community-based services only if a nonpsychiatric medical condition or developmental disability requires nursing-facility or intermediate-care-facility level of care, as determined by the PAS assessment. A registered nurse or social worker conducts the assessment, and the resulting score gets measured against the relevant threshold — one for elderly or physically disabled applicants, another for developmentally disabled applicants.