Happy Medicaid Monday! This is the second of five blog posts each focusing on Medicaid and what you need to know to maximize the benefits of this mainstream resource for people experiencing homelessness.
Category: Health
Medicaid Monday: What should you know?
Today we are introducing a new resource on Medicaid the Alliance put together in conjunction with TAC and CSH, titled “Using Medicaid to Pay for Services in PSH: Steps for CoC Leads to Get Started”. This resource outlines basic steps CoC leads can take to advance their efforts with securing Medicaid as a resource as part of the local system of services.
Using Medicaid to Pay for Services in PSH
The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the Technical Assistance Collaborative, and CSH have developed this “how to” guide to help Continuum of Care (CoC) and other service system leaders work with health care systems to explore how Medicaid can finance supportive services in permanent supportive housing.
SOAR works to increase access to benefits
A new evaluation of the Supplemental Security Income (SSI)/Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) Outreach, Access, and Recovery (SOAR) model has found that SOAR is effective for increasing approval of disability applications. SOAR is a national program designed to increase access to the disability income benefit programs administered by the Social Security Administration (SSA) for eligible adults who are experiencing or at-risk of homelessness and have a mental illness, medical impairment, and/or a co-occurring substance use disorder.
Opioid Abuse and Homelessness
The issue of opioid abuse has risen to a level of national crisis as the number of people abusing prescription drugs and heroin has dramatically risen, and the rate of opioid-related overdose deaths has tripled since 2000.2 In 2014, an estimated 2.5 million people had opioid-use disorders (OUD) involving prescription drug or heroin abuse, and opioid-related overdoses were responsible for more than 28,000 deaths.