Consumer choice in home- and community-based long-term care: policy implications for decisionally incapacitated...

There is a strong national and international movement to enhance the role of consumer choice, control, and direction regarding important aspects of publicly financed home- and community-based long-term care. The research project described in this article set out to examine, with a particular focus on Ohio, policy-relevant issues pertaining to how choices about publicly financed home- and community-based long-term care are actually made, implemented, and monitored under a consumer direction model, but when the care recipient is unable to act as an autonomous, independent consumer selecting rationally among various home- and community-based long-term care options competing for the consumer's business in the marketplace.