Florida Medicaid Planning and Application Help, Statewide

Medicaid planning is the work of getting a person's finances into the shape Florida requires before the application is filed, so that the application is approved the first time and as early as the rules allow. Florida's long-term care Medicaid program for nursing homes is the Institutional Care Program (ICP); the same financial rules apply to the Statewide Medicaid Managed Care Long-Term Care program (SMMC LTC), which pays for assisted living and home care.

In 2026 a single applicant may have no more than $2,000 in countable assets and no more than $2,982 a month in gross income. Almost nobody who needs a nursing home fits inside those numbers on the day they need care. Planning is how a family closes the gap lawfully: by identifying what is exempt, by spending down what is countable in ways Florida permits, by setting up a Qualified Income Trust when income is over the cap, and by protecting a spouse who is still at home.

The alternative to planning is private-paying a Florida nursing home at $9,000 to $12,000 or more a month while trying to work it out alone, or letting the facility file an application that has not been thought through. Both are common. Both are expensive.

Most families who call us are in one of three situations:

• A parent or spouse has just entered a nursing home after a hospital stay, Medicare's rehabilitation coverage is running out, and the facility is asking how the bill will be paid. This is a Medicaid "crisis" application, and it is the situation we handle most often.
• A loved one is in assisted living or at home and the money is running low. Assisted living Medicaid in Florida runs through a managed care program with a wait list, so the timing of the first step matters.
• Nothing has happened yet, but a diagnosis or a decline makes it clear that long-term care is coming. Planning before the five-year look-back period starts to matter is when the most can be protected, and it is when an elder law attorney is most valuable.

We help families whether the applicant is single or married, whether or not there is a home, and whether or not there have been gifts or transfers in the last five years. Where the situation calls for legal work, the elder law firm that founded us, Zacharia Frey PLLC, handles it under a separate engagement.

1. Free screening. A short online screening or a phone call tells us the applicant's income, assets, marital status, and care setting. From that we can usually say, the same day, whether the person is already eligible, what stands in the way, and what a plan would look like.
2. A written plan. We identify exempt assets, countable assets, any income problem that needs a Qualified Income Trust, any transfer in the look-back that needs attention, and what the community spouse can keep. Where a legal step is needed, we say so and involve the law firm.
3. Document gathering. A Florida application needs five years of statements for every account, plus deeds, policies, income letters, and identification. We give the family a checklist and manage the collection.
4. Filing with DCF. We prepare and submit the application through ACCESS Florida, act as the designated representative, and coordinate the CARES medical assessment through the Department of Elder Affairs.
5. Working the case to approval. DCF issues requests for more information with short deadlines. We answer them, track the DCF processing clock, and deal with the caseworker so the family does not have to.
6. After approval. We explain the patient responsibility amount, the Qualified Income Trust deposits if there is one, and the annual renewal.

Our fee for managing a Florida Medicaid application is a flat $3,500. We publish it because families deserve to know it before they call.

In most cases the fee is not an extra cost. Florida requires an applicant to spend down countable assets to $2,000 before Medicaid begins, and our fee is a permitted spend-down expense. Money that would otherwise have been paid to the nursing home for roughly nine more days of private-pay care is instead spent on getting the application right, which typically produces an approval sooner than a family working alone would reach.

Legal services, when a case needs them, are a separate engagement with Zacharia Frey PLLC and are quoted separately. We tell families up front when we think a case will need an attorney.

Florida has a number of non-lawyer Medicaid application companies. What sets Senior Care Resources apart is that it was founded, and is still directed, by a practicing elder law attorney, and that it is affiliated with an elder law firm.

That matters at exactly the moments an application company cannot help: when there has been a gift in the look-back, when a Qualified Income Trust has to be drafted, when a spouse should consider spousal refusal, when a personal services contract or a Medicaid-compliant annuity is the right tool, when a deed needs to change, or when a denial has to be appealed. A stand-alone application company has to send the family to find a lawyer and start over. We do not.

Our founder, Carl B. Zacharia, is also the author of Florida Long-Term Care and Medicaid: A Family’s Guide to Finding, Getting, and Paying for Good Care (2026 Edition), a plain-English guide to the whole system written for families, not for lawyers.

Everywhere in Florida. Medicaid is a statewide program administered by Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) through the same rules and the same online system in every county, and nearly everything about an application can be done by phone, video, secure upload, and mail. Our office is in Bonita Springs, and we meet Southwest Florida families in person, but a family in Jacksonville, Pensacola, Orlando, Tampa, Miami, or The Villages gets exactly the same service. See our Florida regions pages for county-by-county detail.