How to Switch Home Care Agencies in Texas Through STAR+PLUS

If you’re enrolled in STAR+PLUS HCBS in Dallas and your current home care arrangement isn’t working — the agency is unresponsive, the aide isn’t a good fit, or you’ve learned about

Consumer Directed Services and want a family member to be your paid caregiver — you can make a change.

How to Change Your Agency or Service Model

Contact your MCO’s service coordinator and tell them what you want to change. Texas gives STAR+PLUS participants several types of provider changes, and the coordinator facilitates each one.

Agency to agency: If you’re receiving care through one home care agency and want to switch toa different agency (including CareChoice), the coordinator moves your authorized services to the new provider. Your care plan and hours stay the same.

Agency to CDS: This is the most impactful switch for families who want a relative to become the paid caregiver. You’re moving from agency-assigned aides to a family-directed model where your loved one hires their own attendant. The coordinator helps you set up CDS, connect with an FMSA, designate the employer of record and attendant, and begin services. Your authorized hours carry over from the agency model to CDS.

CDS to CDS (changing your FMSA): If you’re already using CDS but the FMSA isn’t performing— paychecks are late, paperwork is lost, communication is poor — you can request a different FMSA through the service coordinator. The attendant’s employment transfers to the new FMSA.

CDS to agency: If the CDS model isn’t working for your family (the management responsibilities are too much, the family caregiver situation changed), you can switch back to agency-directed care. The coordinator assigns a new agency.

What Carries Over

Your care plan, your authorized HCBS services, your authorized hours, your STAR+PLUS enrollment, and your MCO assignment all stay the same. You’re changing who delivers the care, not what care you receive.

If you want to change your MCO at the same time as your provider, that’s a separate process handled through the HHSC enrollment line — and it’s typically only available during open enrollment periods or in certain qualifying circumstances.

The Agency-to-CDS Switch: What We See Most

In our experience at CareChoice, the most common switch Dallas families make is from agency-directed care to CDS. The story is almost always the same: the family has been receiving care from agency staff, learned that Texas allows family members to be hired and paid through CDS, and wants to make the change immediately.

The transition involves choosing who will serve as the employer of record (the care recipient or their representative), identifying the family member who will be the paid attendant, connecting with an FMSA through the MCO, completing the attendant’s background check and employment paperwork, and beginning CDS services once the FMSA enrollment is complete.

CareChoice facilitates this entire process. In our experience, the agency-to-CDS transition takes approximately three to five weeks from the initial request to the attendant’s first paycheck.  During the transition, the family can continue receiving agency care until CDS is active — there doesn’t need to be a gap.

Don’t Stay Because You Think You’re Stuck

The number one reason Dallas families don’t switch is the belief that switching will be complicated, that they’ll lose their hours, or that they’ll have to start the whole Medicaid process over. None of that is true. The switch is a provider change — not a re-enrollment. Your Medicaid eligibility, your STAR+PLUS enrollment, and your care plan are all untouched.

If your current arrangement isn’t serving your family, the only cost of switching is the few weeks it takes to set up the new provider. The cost of staying is continuing to receive subpar care.

Ready to switch? →Contact CareChoice in Dallas

Written by Shamere Dunswell, Community Relations Manager | CareChoice