ALTCS
Understanding Arizona long-term care
What ALTCS may cover, what it does not, and where eligibility decisions come from.
Care Placement, Made Personal.
A little more clarity for the road ahead.
When care at home is no longer the right fit, we help families make a thoughtful, informed move forward.
Free to familiesCompliant with A.R.S. § 36-446.14ALTCS guidance
One advisor
A considered search, led personally by Stephanie Acosta.
Anyone can send you a list of buildings. A placement that works starts further back: the medication list, the transfer status, the wound care, the behaviours, the money. Stephanie reads those first, then finds the home that can genuinely care for that person, and confirms the bed, the licence level and the acceptance before a date is promised to anyone.
She holds a bachelor’s degree in nursing, has experience running a licensed care home, and has worked in medical billing and coding, so she understands the discharge pressure a case manager is under and the budget a daughter is working with, often in the same conversation. Case managers at Banner and Abrazo hospitals refer patients to her.
The Heaven Sent journal
Useful answers for a hard season.
Plain-language guides for the questions families and care teams face before a move.
For families
How to know when it may be time
A gentle starting point when home care has become harder than one person can safely manage.
Care planning
What care can cost
The questions to ask before comparing homes, communities and care arrangements.
Reviews and feedback
Trust is earned one family at a time.
We will only publish feedback from people who have chosen to share their experience. Until then, the most useful thing we can offer is a clear conversation and honest guidance.
The difference
A bed is not a placement.
Anyone can find an opening. The work is knowing whether that opening can hold the person: their mobility, their medications, their behaviours, and how the care will be paid for six months from now. Get it wrong and the family moves twice. Get it right and nobody has to think about it again.
Where people are when they call
Two starting points, one question underneath.
A hospital, rehab unit or skilled nursing floor
There is a discharge date, it is sooner than anyone expected, and the plan is not ready. A case manager calls us, or hands the family our number. Acuity is checked against Arizona licence levels before anyone commits to a bed.
Home, where the family has been doing it themselves
No crisis, no hospital. A daughter managing her mother’s medications, meals and nights, or a husband caring for a wife with dementia who is awake and frightened at 3am. If that is where you are, you are not late, and you have not failed.
What we do
Placement at every level of care Arizona licenses.
Supervisory, personal and directed care, in ten-bed homes and larger communities.
Assisted living
Care needs, budget and location matched to the right licensed community or home.
Residential care homes
Arizona’s homes of ten residents or fewer: often the most attentive care, and often better value.
Memory care
Secure, directed-care settings for dementia, wandering risk and sundowning.
Skilled nursing and rehab
Short-term rehab and long-term nursing placement, including the Medicare day-100 transition.
Urgent placement
A discharge date that moved up, or a plan that fell through.
Areas we serve
Scottsdale · Paradise Valley · Cave Creek & Carefree · Fountain Hills · Gilbert · Chandler & Sun Lakes · Mesa · Glendale · Peoria · Surprise · Sun City West · All areas
Paying for care
If the money is the problem, start here.
ALTCS is Arizona’s Medicaid long-term care programme, run by AHCCCS. It can pay for care in an assisted living setting for people who meet the nursing-facility level of care and the financial limits. It generally does not pay assisted living room and board. AHCCCS alone decides eligibility; we help families understand the programme and find homes that accept it.
Eligibility · How to apply · ALTCS vs Medicare · Homes that accept ALTCS
When there is no money at all
Some of the people we place would otherwise be discharged with nowhere to go: ALTCS-pending, no family, no funds. These placements pay us little or nothing, and we take them. If that is the call you are making, make it.
For discharge planners and case managers
You need the placement to hold. So do we.
We assess acuity before we place, not after, and we tell you plainly when a patient is not appropriate for the setting you were hoping for. Behavioural, bariatric, two-person transfer, oxygen, dialysis transport, wander risk, ALTCS-pending: these are the referrals we ask for.
What we need to start
- Patient initials, age and area
- Payer: private, ALTCS, ALTCS-pending, VA or long-term care insurance
- Level of care, mobility, behaviours, wound care, oxygen or dialysis needs
- Your name and a number to reach you
No names, dates of birth or record numbers on the web form. Send records only through your organisation’s approved secure channel.
How it goes
Four steps, and you are not managing any of them.
Questions families ask
Straight answers.
Is this really free?
Free to you, yes. The care home pays our fee, typically 50 to 100 percent of the first month’s rent and care charges. You pay nothing. It does not increase your rent, and Arizona law requires us to disclose the arrangement in writing before we refer you. Here is the whole mechanism.
Do you only recommend places that pay you?
No, and it is the right question to ask any placement agency. When the best option is somewhere that pays us nothing, that is still the recommendation you will get. That happens most often with ALTCS placements, where we take no fee at all.
What is the difference between an assisted living home and a centre?
In Arizona it is a licensing distinction. An assisted living home serves ten or fewer residents, usually in a house in a residential neighbourhood. A centre serves eleven or more. Both are licensed by the Arizona Department of Health Services at supervisory, personal or directed care levels. More on residential care homes.
Does Medicare pay for assisted living?
No. Medicare covers short-term skilled nursing after a qualifying hospital stay, up to 100 days with cost-sharing after day 20, but it does not pay for long-term assisted living or memory care. ALTCS is the programme that may help. ALTCS vs Medicare.
Stephanie holds an ownership interest in an Arizona assisted living home. We do not refer clients to it. Read our disclosures.
Begin
Tell us what’s happening. We’ll tell you what’s possible.
A conversation with Stephanie Acosta costs nothing and carries no obligation, including if the answer is that you don’t need us yet.