Evaluation of Washington’s COVID-19 Public Health Emergency Demonstration: The Impact of Waiver Authority on Stabilizing the Long-Term Support Services System during COVID-19

To help combat the rapid spread of COVID-19 in nursing facilities and to help stabilize the long-term services and supports (LTSS) system more broadly, Washington State applied for and received a COVID-19 Disaster waiver in April 2020. This evaluation examined if the state’s strategies to mitigate the impact of the public health emergency on LTSS provider capacity and client access to services were successful. Overall, we found that after an initial decline in service utilization in the early months of the pandemic, the use of LTSS services remained consistent with pre-COVID-19 trends. This suggests that the strategies employed under the waiver were successful at stabilizing the system.