ALW referrals from a hospital or skilled nursing facility (SNF)

The Assisted Living Waiver (ALW) cannot meet a discharge date. The state controls when waiver slots open, so keep your safe discharge plan running. ALW can still be the right long-term plan for a patient who needs nursing-facility level of care and could live safely in assisted living. Today, confirm the admission date, get the patient's agreement and call Beta's ALW team to start the referral.

Refer a patient or client

Important: The California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) keeps the master waitlist and decides when a slot is released. Beta is a Care Coordination Agency (CCA), the state-listed organization that does the ALW paperwork and care planning with the applicant. Beta cannot promise eligibility, a slot, a timeline or a bed. A facility listed as participating is not a confirmed bed. In an emergency, call 911.

Your part, in four steps

1. Check probable fit with the referral checklist, and note the setting and the exact stay dates. Refer before discharge, as soon as the long-term picture points to ALW.
2. Get the patient's or their authorized representative's permission for Beta to contact them.
3. Send the referral from Beta's referral portal with the context below, or call Beta's ALW team.
4. Keep the safe discharge plan running, and find out where the records are. Do not promise assisted living at discharge.

What to have at hand for the call

The referral form takes your own details, and a coordinator calls you. Nothing clinical goes through a form. Have ready:

• your organization, role and callback number;
• the setting, the admission date, any moves between settings and the planned discharge date;
• who verified the dates, and whether a face sheet or admission record exists;
• the patient's county, Medi-Cal status and daily care needs.

Keep names, record numbers and clinical details out of ordinary email. If records are needed, Beta's ALW team tells you how to send them.

Read the referral checklist

The 60-day priority and the dates that prove it

Under DHCS ALW Policy Letter 24-002, first priority goes to people who have been in a nursing facility or other institutional setting for at least 60 days when the waitlist request is submitted. The letter's examples of proof are an SNF face sheet and an admission record. The CCA confirms the at least 60 days when a slot is released, so record exact dates. "About two months" does not establish 60 days.

A patient who met the rule when the request was submitted keeps that priority after going home. Proof of the stay is still required. How the waitlist works.

After you refer

Beta contacts the applicant or their representative and screens the waitlist request. Policy Letter 24-002 requires screening within 7 calendar days of receipt and written confirmation within 3 calendar days after screening. Those are screening deadlines, not slot-release dates. See what happens after a referral.

Things that go wrong, and what to do instead

Start the referral and keep the discharge plan moving. No one, including Beta, can give you the slot date.