Washington Medicaid Long-Term Care

Washington's Medicaid program goes by the name Apple Health, and it can help cover long-term care once someone clears both a financial test and a functional assessment. The program's long-term-services menu includes Home and Community Services waivers, Developmental Disabilities Administration waivers, Community First Choice, and nursing-facility care.

No single office runs the whole show. The Health Care Authority owns Medicaid policy and the financial-eligibility side, while DSHS uses its CARE process to document how much help someone actually needs, confirm long-term-care eligibility, and build a care plan. Because the two functions sit in different agencies, a financial approval by itself doesn't guarantee services start — the functional assessment still has to happen, and vice versa: needing help doesn't automatically mean someone is financially eligible.