| TO: | Honorable Carlos Uresti, Chair, House Committee on Human Services |
| FROM: | John Keel, Director, Legislative Budget Board |
| IN RE: | HB1787 by Naishtat (Relating to the transfer of money appropriated to provide care for certain persons in nursing facilities to provide community-based services to those persons.), As Introduced |
No significant fiscal implication to the State is anticipated.
The bill would require the Department of Human Services (DHS) to quantify the amount of money appropriated by the legislature that would have been spent during the remainder of the biennium on nursing facility care for a person who moves out of the facility to live in the community. Under the provisions of the bill, DHS would then have to transfer that quantified amount within its budget or to other human services agencies to provide community-based services to the person. The bill requires that the money transferred must be redirected to one or more community based programs to provide community based services to the person after the person leaves the nursing facility.
DHS indicates no fiscal implication to the agency is anticipated. However, the implementation of this bill would potentially decrease the number of clients receiving institutional care and increase the number of clients receiving services from community based programs provide by the department or another health and human services agency. DHS indicates that the impact of changing location of services should be "cost neutral" as long as the cost of services received in the community are not higher than the cost of services received from an institution.
DHS states the the provisions of the bill speak to the transfer of money from the department to another community care program, but does not consider the possibility of the client being moved back to the nursing facility after a stay in a community based program. DHS assumes the same flexibility would be allowed to then transfer the unused portion back to the Department to provide said nursing facility services.
It is assumed that expenditures for all services could increase as institutional care is an entitlement and services must be provided to all eligible clients.
| Source Agencies: | 324 Department Of Human Services
|
| LBB Staff: | JK, EB, KF, ML, KG
|