Mississippi Home Care Medicaid

Mississippi organizes its home- and community-based care options into five distinct waiver areas, according to DOM's Long Term Care page: the Assisted Living waiver, the Elderly and Disabled (E&D) waiver, the Independent Living waiver, the ID/DD waiver, and the Traumatic Brain Injury/Spinal Cord Injury (TBI/SCI) waiver. These operate as separate service pathways, so simply being eligible for Medicaid doesn't by itself determine which waiver, service setting, or clinical standard actually applies to a given person (DOM long-term-care overview).

For most older adults trying to stay out of a nursing facility, the E&D and Assisted Living waivers tend to be the most relevant. DOM describes the E&D waiver as serving people age 21 or older who would otherwise require nursing-facility-level care without home and community-based services; its case-management teams pair a registered nurse with a licensed social worker, and financial eligibility can run through either the SSI pathway or the institutional income-and-resource pathway, up to 300% of the SSI federal benefit rate (DOM E&D Waiver).

The Assisted Living waiver serves a similar population — people who would need nursing-facility-level care without services — but delivers it through licensed Personal Care Home-Assisted Living facilities approved as Medicaid assisted-living providers. Clinical eligibility for this waiver weighs daily and instrumental activities of living, sensory and cognitive deficits, behavioral factors, medical conditions, and medical services needed (DOM Assisted Living Waiver).