Louisiana Medicaid Long-Term Care

Louisiana Medicaid is the umbrella program families deal with first, and the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) is the agency that writes and publishes the rules that decide who gets covered. According to LDH's own long-term-care guidance, coverage can take the form of care in a Medicaid-certified facility or services delivered right in the community — as long as the applicant clears the program's eligibility bar.

For facility-based care, LDH's LTC policy manual (H-800) treats nursing facilities and intermediate care facilities for people with intellectual disabilities as institutional settings governed by the special-income-limit framework described elsewhere on this site. Simply moving into a facility doesn't create eligibility on its own — an applicant still has to satisfy the program's nonfinancial and resource tests.

For care delivered outside an institution, Louisiana relies on Section 1915(c) home- and community-based services (HCBS) waivers. CMS's factsheet on Louisiana's waivers identifies the Adult Day Health Care Waiver and the Community Choices Waiver as the two routes aimed at older adults and people with physical disabilities who meet a nursing-facility level of care; separate waivers exist for people with intellectual or developmental disabilities and other groups.