Guidance History

Brief Issue Description

On September 16, 2016, CMS issued guidance to states to begin reporting Money Follows the Person (MFP) participation and services records in T-MSIS starting January 1, 2017. That guidance included a crosswalk from the legacy MFP reporting format to the T-MSIS data elements to facilitate this reporting. This T-MSIS guidance document provides additional information to support the T-MSIS reporting team inclusion of this data in monthly reporting.

Background Discussion

States have been reporting MFP program participation and services data to CMS since the program’s inception in 2007. Since the formal evaluation will conclude at the end of September 2017, CMS provided guidance to the state MFP grantees to work with their state’s T-MSIS teams to include data in monthly T-MSIS reporting. This collaboration reduces state reporting burden to CMS and supports the development of a single, national data source for state Medicaid data. 

The September 2016 guidance indicates that MFP grantees should start reporting MFP participation and MFP service records in T-MSIS files by no later than January 1, 2017. This means all MFP transitions that occur on or after January 1, 2017 and all services financed with MFP grant funds should be reported in the state T-MSIS data files. Further, the guidance documents provide MFP program staff guidance about how states are to report participation in the MFP demonstration and the claims associated with the community-based long-term services and supports that are financed with MFP grant funds in these new T-MSIS files. The crosswalk that accompanies it (see Appendix C: Crosswalk of MFP File Data Elements to T-MSIS File Data Elements (PDF, 353.79 KB)) is more technical and designed for use by the T-MSIS team and state staff directly involved in the construction of state T-MSIS files.

The list of states awarded MFP grant funding is accessible on the Money Follows the Person page on Medicaid.gov.

CMS Guidance

State T-MSIS and MFP grantee staffs should jointly review historical MFP reporting to CMS and devise approaches to report the data in T-MSIS, if not currently having done so. The collaboration between the T-MSIS technical team and the MFP grantee staffs is critical for successful reporting in T-MSIS, like it is for all policy areas. CMS expects the quality of the data submitted to T-MSIS to be the same as or better than historical reporting to CMS. The appendices to this guidance include three documents that have previously been made available to MFP program staff. Appendix A (PDF, 156.06 KB) provides an overview of reporting MFP rebalancing program participation in T-MSIS, Appendix B (PDF, 174.69 KB) includes frequently asked questions on reporting MFP enrollment and service records in T-MSIS, and Appendix C (PDF, 353.79 KB) is a crosswalk of MFP file data elements to T-MSIS file data elements. Please review these appendices of existing MFP guidance and reach out to your T-MSIS TA if you have further questions.