The Money Follows the Person (MFP) demonstration provides federal grant funds to 29 states and the District of Columbia to support state efforts to rebalance their long-term care systems over a seven-year period. Under the demonstration, MFP states are planning to transition about 34,000 individuals from institutional settings to community-based care between 2007 and 2013. MFP states are also implementing initiatives designed to rebalance state Medicaid long-term care systems so they rely less on costly institutional care and individuals have a choice of where they live and receive services.

Since the start of the program in October 2007 when the first three states obtained approval from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to begin, and the end of December 2008, states have transitioned 1,482 people or 37 percent of their targeted transitions for this period.

This report describes states' early implementation experiences and state transition activity as of December 2008. It also discusses the challenges that states have encountered in trying to launch the program, and implications for making fundamental changes in the long-term care system (abstract from p. 1 of report).