Medicaid Infrastructure Grant

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CMS is soliciting proposals from States to develop Medicaid infrastructure to support the competitive employment of people with disabilities by facilitating targeted improvements to the State’s Medicaid program and/or developing a comprehensive employment infrastructure that coordinates disparate State service delivery systems. Section 203 of the Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Improvement Act of 1999 directed the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to establish a grant program supporting State efforts to better serve people with disabilities who are employed. CMS is the designated DHHS agency with administrative responsibility for this grant program. The grant program was authorized for 11 years, and $150 million in funding was appropriated for the first 5 years of the program. For each of FY 2006 through 2011, the amount appropriated for the preceding FY increased by the percentage increase (if any) in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers for the preceding fiscal year. The minimum grant award to an eligible State is $500,000 per fiscal year, subject to the sufficiency of the annual appropriation limit to cover all applicants. States are eligible to request funding in a consecutive fiscal year. While CMS anticipates that the proposals submitted by the States will vary, there is the overall expectation that States participating in this grant program will use the funds to remove the barriers to employment of persons with disabilities by creating systemic change throughout the Medicaid program as well as by bridging Medicaid and other programs to further remove barriers. Applicants should propose infrastructure development which will offer sustainable and significant improvement in the ability of the system to provide adequate health coverage for people with disabilities, who are competitively employed, provide needed personal assistance and other supports, and/or remove other significant employment barriers. The outcome of these efforts is to increase the number of people with disabilities in competitive employment. Summaries of current grantee activities can be found on the CMS website for the Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Improvement Act at: http://www.cms.hhs.gov/twwiia/ .

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