Maryland's Aging System Enters Its Implementation Year
Your monthly briefing on Aging, Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, and Homeless Management Information Systems for Maryland partners
THIS MONTH IN MARYLAND
On October 1, Maryland's Longevity Ready Maryland Act Takes Effect, a New State Plan on Aging Begins, and the DDA's Waiver Amendment #4 Faces Its Federal Deadline
October 1 is the date on the Maryland human services calendar this year. The Longevity Ready Maryland (LRM) Act, House Bill 278 and Senate Bill 113 become law and lock the state's ten-year aging plan in for good. The 2026 to 2029 State Plan on Aging goes live the same day. Additionally, the Developmental Disabilities Administration's (DDA) Community Pathways Waiver Amendment #4 hits the end of its 90-day federal review window, when the reasonable and customary wage changes for self-directed caregivers either move forward or slip again. Three systems, one date, and a lot of coordination work in front of every Maryland provider between now and then.
What's in This Month's Issue:
Featured From CaseWorthy: Your Staff Are Already Using AI. Do You Know Which Tools?
More From CaseWorthy: Aging into Crisis and Why Homelessness Prevention Belongs in Aging Services
Aging in Maryland: LRM Becomes Law, Maryland Earns AARP Age-Friendly Designation, and the New State Plan Begins
Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities: The 90-Day CMS Clock on Waiver Amendment #4
Homeless Management Information Systems (HMIS): A Federal Court Vacates the FY2026 Continuum of Care Notice
Case Study Spotlight: Eastern Nebraska Office on Aging
More to Read This Month
Quick Poll: What Is Slowing Your Cross-Program Coordination the Most?
FROM OUR CHIEF INFORMATION SECURITY OFFICER
Your Staff Are Already Using AI. Do You Know Which Tools?
Most human services agencies do not have an AI problem. They have an AI visibility problem. Staff are already using free chatbots, browser summarizers, and AI transcription tools to keep up with the day, usually without anyone above them knowing which ones or with what data. CaseWorthy CISO Shayne Champion lays out what to do about it.
1. Write a policy people can actually follow. One page, plain language. Name the approved tools, name what data never goes into an unapproved one, and name who to ask when it is unclear. Draft it with frontline staff, not for them.
2. Find your shadow AI before it finds you. Spend two weeks in real conversations, not memos, about what staff are already using. Case notes in free chatbots, AI transcription on family visits, browser extensions that "summarize anything." Discovery is not blame.
3. Treat AI agents like untrusted users. AI runs on objectives, and nobody knows exactly what those objectives are. Grant access on least privilege, rotate keys, and review agent permissions on the same cadence as any other user account.
Each of these takeaways is a small, consistent move you can make in the next thirty days, not a perfect plan you never start.
Aging Into Crisis: Why Homelessness Prevention Must Become an Aging Services Priority
Older adult homelessness is not a specialty topic anymore. On a single night in January 2024, roughly 770,000 people experienced homelessness in the U.S., the highest number since federal reporting began in 2007, and more than 146,000 of them were age 55 or older. David Lewis, VP of Industry Leadership at CaseWorthy, argues this is not just a housing story. Aging services in Maryland are in a strong position to help solve it. Three takeaways for Maryland providers this month:
The system was not built for who is showing up. Adults experiencing homelessness in their 50s and 60s often have the health profiles of housed people 20 years older, and older adults now make up nearly half of the single-adult homeless population. Programs designed for younger adults or for stably-housed seniors are not built for the people in between.
Maryland already put the vision in writing. The Longevity Ready Maryland plan names housing stability, homelessness prevention, and aging-in-place as core goals. What is left is the operational work: getting Area Agencies on Aging, Continuums of Care, and Medicaid managed care working from one care plan per person instead of three.
Shared data is what makes it real. Client records, HMIS-compliant data exchange, and shared referrals across aging, housing, meals, and health are what turn LRM from a plan into actual service delivery, especially for someone like a 72-year-old client with diabetes, cognitive decline, and no reliable ride to the doctor.
The full article closes with a coordinated-care example that reads a lot like a Maryland Access Point referral network on a good day.
Purpose-Built Technology, Achieving Better Data Governance
Watch the on-demand webinar to learn how the same data-quality foundations that support Longevity Ready Maryland reporting also support HMIS compliance and Community Pathways documentation.
LRM Becomes Law and Maryland Earns an AARP Age-Friendly Designation
On October 1, House Bill 278 and Senate Bill 113 take effect, permanently codifying the Longevity Ready Maryland Plan into state statute (see the SB113 chapter text). The law names the Secretary of Aging as the implementation lead, expands the Commission on Aging, requires a public dashboard, and locks in an updated multisector plan every four years. That structural change lands alongside a milestone win: on July 28, AARP officially designated Maryland as an Age-Friendly State, one of only a handful of states to earn it. For Area Agencies on Aging and county partners, LRM is no longer a plan on paper. It is now something the state can measure you against and something you have to report on.
A New State Plan on Aging Begins the Same Day
The Maryland Department of Aging's new State Plan on Aging runs October 1, 2026 through September 30, 2029, and builds on the Supporting Older Adults with Resources (SOAR) program that consolidated three older state programs earlier this year. The practical takeaway for provider organizations is that the state will be looking at person-centered outcomes and cross-program data, not just program-by-program service counts.
Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD)
The 90-Day CMS Clock on Waiver Amendment #4 Closes This Month
Homelessness and Homeless Management Information Systems (HMIS)
A Federal Court Vacates the FY2026 Continuum of Care Notice
On August 7, U.S. District Judge Mary S. McElroy of the District of Rhode Island ruled that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) violated the Administrative Procedure Act when it issued the $4 billion FY2026 Continuum of Care Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO), and threw out the NOFO in full. Applications are paused nationally, including the $1.3 billion Tier 2 set-aside that would have shifted funding toward transitional and time-limited supportive services. The Maryland Balance of State CoC directed applicants to pause all FY2026 CoC application work until HUD issues a new notice. The Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program NOFO remained active on its August 10 deadline.
What the Ruling Does Not Change
Federal grants already awarded to Baltimore programs are not clawed back by the ruling. What is on hold is the next round, and every Maryland CoC that had already built ranking documents, HMIS performance scorecards, and project narratives around the July NOFO needs to keep that work ready to go. On the state side, the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development is continuing to fund the state Homelessness Solutions Program, which supports 14 organizations across the Baltimore CoC, so state-funded street outreach, shelter, rapid re-housing, and HMIS data operations continue on their existing performance period.
CASE STUDY SPOTLIGHT
Eastern Nebraska Office on Aging
Eastern Nebraska Office on Aging (ENOA), an Area Agency on Aging serving greater Omaha, runs Meals on Wheels, care management, Medicaid waiver programs, and in-home services, the same mix Maryland AAAs will be answering for under the new State Plan on Aging.
Before ServTracker by CaseWorthy, staff were working out of paper and an older system that could not track basic fields like veteran status, pet ownership, or client holds. After bringing all staff onto ServTracker in January 2025, holiday frozen-meal signup went from many hours of data entry to under an hour, and pulling a list of clients for a holiday pet bag program went from a manual scan to a report in minutes. Grant applications, always a crunch for AAAs, are now built straight from live data. When a team member retired, ENOA redistributed the work instead of hiring behind them.
ADvancing States on preparing for a longer-lived society. Read at ADvancing States, July 1. Summary report from the 2026 Aging Summit compiling recommendations from 220-plus leaders across 42 states and territories on workforce, caregiver supports, integrated systems, and data infrastructure for aging services.
Maryland Department of Health seeks input on expanding Medicaid nutrition services. Read at MDH, August 19. Request for Information on food and nutrition services for Medicaid members through an In Lieu of Services and Settings (ILOS) authority beginning in 2028, building on Food Is Medicine, Medically Tailored Meals in six counties, and the Produce Prescription program launching this summer. Responses due October 14.
Baltimore's next round of homelessness grants in limbo after court ruling. Baltimore Sun, August 12. Local reporting on how the vacated FY2026 CoC NOFO is stopping Baltimore City's Continuum of Care grant competition and leaving providers unsure when new applications can move.
QUICK POLL
What Is Slowing Your Cross-Program Coordination the Most?
A. Getting shared consent and releases of information across aging, housing, and health partners.
B. Integrating HMIS data with aging services and Medicaid waiver systems.
C. Getting to one shared care plan per person instead of one plan per program.
D. Reporting outcomes back to LRM, HUD, and CMS from the same underlying data.
Reply with A, B, C, or D. We will share the results next month.
Questions or feedback? Questions or feedback? Please reach out to us! Thanks for the work you do across Maryland.
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