Long-term services and supports (LTSS) include a broad range of services from nursing home care to community supports such as personal care, transportation, help with chores and maintaining a home.

They provide a particularly important lifeline for older adults and individuals with disabilities or multiple chronic conditions. Access to appropriate LTSS can help people live independently, including remaining in their homes, continuing to work, and participating in their families and communities.

Given the vulnerability of the population relying on LTSS, it is important to understand whether these managed care models are living up to their potential and providing the access to services and coordination that beneficiaries need, including supports that allow them to live independently in the community.

With this in mind, the Center for Community Engagement in Health Innovation engaged Lake Research Partners to conduct focus groups in 2015 and 2016 in Ohio and Massachusetts with dually eligible consumers enrolled in health plans providing managed LTSS through their state demonstration (and one Senior Care Option program), as well as with their caregivers, to better understand consumer experience with these plans. The findings of these focus groups are contained in this new report produced by the Center in collaboration with Lake Research Partners.