Disability and cognitive impairment criteria: targeting those who need the most home care

Proposed federal long-term care reforms include eligibility criteria based on disability and cognitive impairment. This article illustrates the process of evaluating alternative eligibility criteria based on one possible targeting goal--serving those who need the most care. Channeling data are used to construct a measure of total care needs which is used to evaluate success at meeting the targeting goal. Results indicate the difficulty of establishing eligibility cutoffs that are equitable and meet the targeting goal.