Overview of the Long-Term Care Functional Screen

Wisconsin’s Long-Term Care (LTC) Functional Screen was developed to provide an automated and objective way to determine the long-term care needs of elders and people with physical or development disabilities. The functional screen has multiple uses including: research, establishing level of care for Family Care eligibility, and providing information helpful to people making decisions about how to meet their long-term care needs. The screen is basically an "inventory of needs" or list of activities that people need to perform, or have performed for them, in the course of every-day life. The screen gathers information about whether a person needs help, and how much help they need, in performing the activities. The screen was developed with input from stakeholders, consumers, and clinical practitioners and with several studies to test its validity and reliability. (For more information, see Testing the Reliability and Validity of the Wisconsin LTC Functional Screen (PDF, 54 KB).

The screen looks at both "activities of daily living" (ADLs), which include bathing, dressing, toileting, transferring, mobility, and eating, and "Instrumental Activities of Daily Living" (IADLs), which are meal preparation, managing medications and treatments, money management, and using the telephone. In addition, the screen has questions about cognition, behavior, diagnoses, medically-oriented tasks, transportation, and employment; as well as indicators for mental health problems, substance abuse problems, and other conditions that put a person at-risk of institutionalization. Upon completion of the screen, the clinical professional who administered the screen can instantly see the applicant’s level of care and eligibility for Family Care and other home and community-based waiver programs in Wisconsin. Click here to view an interactive walk through of the LTC Functional Screen application.

Any information collected for the screen or during the screening process is confidential. The LTC Functional Screen is voluntary, but it is required to enroll in Family Care. The current version of the screen is a web-based application that must be entered on-line. An in-depth review of, and instructions for, the web-based functional screen can be seen via the certification course described below.

Only experienced professionals who have taken a training course and have passed a certification exam can administer the screen. At this time the training course must be taken on-line. Agency workers seeking to become certified screeners must work with their agency "screen leads" to register for the course.

DHFS received approval from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (formerly the Health Care Financing Administration) to use the new LTC Functional Screen to determine eligibility for home and community-based waivers for adults in Family Care pilot counties and in other sites. This implementation began in Family Care pilot counties and Partnership sites on October 22, 2001. Use of the functional screen is being expanded to other LTC programs statewide throughout 2002.

Back to: Wisconsin's Functional Screen Home Page

Last Revised:  June 26, 2006