How the Atlanta Regional Commission and the ADRC actually work

Who is who

Three names get used for what is, in metro Atlanta, one front door.

Area Agency on Aging (AAA). Georgia is divided into regions, and each has an Area Agency on Aging responsible for planning, funding and overseeing services for older adults in that region. For the metro Atlanta region, the Area Agency on Aging is the Atlanta Regional Commission.

Aging and Disability Resource Connection (ADRC). This is the information, screening and referral function that an Area Agency on Aging operates. It is the part you actually speak to. The ADRC concept exists statewide, so a family outside metro Atlanta has one too, run by their own region’s Area Agency on Aging.

Empowerline. The public-facing name the Atlanta Regional Commission uses for its aging and disability resource service. If someone at a hospital tells you to call Empowerline, and someone else says call the ADRC, and a third person says call the Area Agency on Aging, you are being sent to the same place.

What they do

• Take the first call and work out what is actually going on, which is often not what the caller opened with.
• Screen for the programs that might fit, including Georgia’s Elderly and Disabled Waiver Program and a range of non-Medicaid programs for older adults.
• Explain options across programs, not within one.
• Refer on to the bodies that run each program.
• Maintain the picture of what exists across the region, which no single provider does.

What they do not do

• They do not deliver waiver services. They do not send a helper to the house, do not employ aides, and do not manage a care plan.
• They do not decide Medicaid eligibility. That is decided by an assessment and by Medicaid’s own financial review.
• They do not act as your case manager. Once someone is enrolled in the waiver, that role sits with a case management agency the member chooses.
• They do not sell anything. They have no stake in which provider a family ends up with.

That last point is the reason to call them first, before calling any agency, including this one. An agency that delivers or coordinates services has an interest in the answer. The ADRC does not, and that makes it the only place a family gets a genuinely neutral read on their situation.

What happens when you call

The shape of the conversation is predictable, even though the detail varies:

1. Who the call is about, and whether you are calling for yourself or for someone else.
2. What is going wrong. What the person cannot manage alone: bathing, stairs, cooking, medications, getting to the bathroom at night. Concrete examples are worth more than adjectives.
3. The household picture. Who lives with them, who helps now, how often, and whether that is holding.
4. Rough financial picture. Income and assets, in general terms. They are not auditing you.
5. What already exists. Medicare, Medicaid, Medicare Advantage plan, current home health, private-pay hours, any program they are already in.
6. What comes next. A set of options, some of which are the waiver and some of which are not, and what each one involves.

Have the person’s Medicaid or Medicare number, a list of diagnoses and medications, and their physician’s name to hand. Nothing is refused for lack of them, but the call goes further with them.

Where the waiver comes in

The Area Agency on Aging screening is the standard route into the Elderly and Disabled Waiver Program, and it is not a step a provider can do instead. A family can talk to a case management agency in parallel – to understand what the program involves, or because they already know they want one – but the screening still has to happen.

If the waiver is what you are trying to understand before you call, read what Georgia Medicaid covers at home first, and the screening page for what that conversation leads to.

A screening is not a determination of eligibility. Nobody, on either side of that phone call, can tell you whether your parent qualifies.