How to Prepare for the 701S Screening in Florida

The 701S screening is a 45-minute phone call administered by a Department of Elder Affairs (DOEA) caseworker through the Elder Helpline (1-800-96-ELDER). It's the single most consequential step in accessing Florida's Statewide Medicaid Managed Care Long-Term Care (SMMC LTC) waiver services — and most families have no idea they need to prepare for it.

Here's what happens: the caseworker asks structured questions about your parent's daily functioning across Activities of Daily Living (ADLs), cognitive symptoms, and behavioral challenges. Based on your answers, the screening generates a priority score that determines your parent's position on the Assessed Prioritized Consumer List (APCL). A high-priority score means relatively fast access to waiver services. A low-priority score means joining a waitlist of over 17,000 people with no clear timeline for release.

The difference between a strong score and a weak one almost always comes down to how you describe your parent's condition. Families who downplay symptoms out of pride or privacy — "she's doing okay most days" — receive systematically lower scores than families who describe the same deficits in specific, clinical terms. This isn't gaming the system. It's reporting accurately in the language the screening tool is designed to capture.

What the 701S Actually Measures

The screening evaluates three categories of need. Understanding what the caseworker is scoring lets you prepare answers that reflect your parent's actual condition rather than the instinctive minimization most families default to.

Activities of Daily Living (ADLs)

The caseworker assesses your parent's ability to independently perform the core ADLs:

• Bathing: Can your parent safely get in and out of the shower or tub, wash all body parts, and manage water temperature without assistance?
• Dressing: Can they select appropriate clothing, manage buttons/zippers, and dress without physical help or verbal cueing?
• Toileting: Can they get to the bathroom, manage clothing, maintain hygiene, and recognize the need to go?
• Transferring: Can they move from bed to chair, stand from sitting, and walk to the bathroom without physical assistance?
• Eating: Can they feed themselves, use utensils, swallow safely, and recognize when food is in front of them?
• Continence: Do they have bladder or bowel accidents? How frequently? Do they recognize when an accident has occurred?

How most families answer: "She needs a little help sometimes." "He does pretty well with most of it."

What the algorithm needs: "She requires standby assistance for bathing because she can no longer safely step over the tub edge — she fell in the shower three weeks ago. She needs verbal cueing to complete dressing and often puts clothes on incorrectly or in the wrong order. She has urinary incontinence approximately four times per week and does not recognize when she needs to be changed."

The difference between these two descriptions can be the difference between a Rank 1 or 2 (which can mean a multi-year wait) and a Rank 5 (which is associated with faster release).

Cognitive and Behavioral Symptoms

For dementia care specifically, the screening weights cognitive and behavioral indicators heavily:

• Wandering or elopement attempts: Has your parent left the home without knowing where they were going? Have they been found by neighbors or police? Has a Silver Alert or BOLO been issued?
• Sundowning: Does your parent experience increased agitation, confusion, or aggression in the late afternoon and evening?
• Medication mismanagement: Have they taken incorrect doses, missed doses, or taken medications at the wrong times? Have there been emergency room visits related to medication errors?
• Aggressive behavior: Have they physically or verbally threatened caregivers, family members, or other residents?
• Unsafe cooking or appliance use: Have they left the stove on, forgotten food in the oven, or been unable to operate familiar household equipment?

What to document before the call: Specific incidents, dates, and outcomes. "On August 14, my mother walked out the front door at 2 AM and was found by a neighbor three blocks away. On September 2, she left the stove burner on for six hours. She has been to the emergency room twice in the past three months for UTIs that caused acute delirium" provides the caseworker with scoreable data. "She sometimes gets confused in the evening" does not.

Caregiver Burden and Risk

The screening also evaluates whether the current caregiving arrangement is sustainable:

• Is the primary caregiver experiencing physical health problems, sleep deprivation, or emotional exhaustion?
• Has the caregiver had to reduce work hours or leave employment?
• Is the parent at risk of abuse, neglect, or self-neglect?
• Are there safety hazards in the home (no grab bars, broken smoke detectors, unsecured medications)?

Families routinely underreport caregiver burden because they feel it reflects poorly on them. The screening isn't judging your caregiving — it's assessing whether the current situation is medically and physically sustainable. If you haven't slept through the night in months because your parent wanders at 3 AM, that's not a complaint. It's a clinical risk factor the algorithm is designed to capture.

The Preparation Checklist

Complete this before calling the Elder Helpline:

1. Document specific incidents in writing. Go through the past 90 days and write down every wandering episode, fall, medication error, emergency room visit, aggressive outburst, and unsafe behavior incident. Include dates, what happened, and the outcome. This is your reference sheet during the screening call.

2. List each ADL with the specific assistance required. Don't think in terms of "needs help" versus "independent." For each ADL, write down exactly what you do: "I help her step into the shower, wash her back and hair, and monitor the water temperature because she set it to scalding twice." The caseworker needs specific functional descriptions, not general impressions.

3. Note hospitalizations and emergency visits. The past 12 months of medical events — hospital admissions, ER visits, ambulance calls, urgent care visits. Include the reason for each. Recurrent hospitalizations (especially for UTIs causing delirium, falls, or medication-related events) are strong indicators of care-level needs.

4. Be the informant, not your parent. A person with moderate to advanced dementia typically underestimates their own deficits. If the caseworker speaks directly with your parent and asks "Can you dress yourself?", the answer is almost always "Yes" — even when it hasn't been true for months. You need to be the primary informant during the screening. If you're calling from out of state, make sure the caseworker understands you're providing the functional assessment.

5. Don't minimize out of pride or guilt. This is the hardest part. Families — especially adult children who feel they should be providing more support — instinctively soften their descriptions. "She has some trouble" becomes the default phrasing for situations where your parent genuinely cannot perform a task safely without assistance. The screening is the wrong place for diplomatic language. Clinical accuracy is what gets your parent the services they need.

What Happens After the Screening

The 701S screening produces a priority ranking that places your parent on the Assessed Prioritized Consumer List (APCL). Higher priority means faster movement through the remaining five gates of the SMMC LTC intake funnel:

1. ✅ 701S screening (you're here)
2. APCL waitlist placement based on priority score
3. Medical certification (physician documents the need for nursing-facility level of care)
4. CARES face-to-face assessment (a CARES assessor evaluates your parent in person)
5. DCF financial eligibility determination (assets and income verification)
6. MCO plan selection (you choose a managed care organization)

A high-priority 701S score doesn't skip the waitlist — but it can affect how quickly your parent moves through it. Rank 1 or 2 can mean a multi-year wait, while Rank 5 is associated with faster release.

If you believe your parent's score doesn't reflect their actual condition, you can request a rescreening based on a "significant change in circumstances" — a documented decline in function, a new hospitalization, a wandering incident, or a change in the caregiver's ability to continue providing care.

The Full System Beyond the Screening

The 701S preparation is one chapter of a larger process. The Florida Dementia & Memory Care Guide covers the complete SMMC LTC intake roadmap — all six gates in sequence — plus the Medicaid financial worksheets (2026 thresholds: $2,982 monthly income cap, $2,000 asset limit), Qualified Income Trust setup, five-year look-back audit, SB 1404 facility evaluation checklist, Silver Alert protocol, and the Alzheimer's Disease Initiative and CMS GUIDE Model respite programs. The screening is the entry point; the guide is the complete system.

Who This Is For

• Families who are about to call the Elder Helpline for the first time and want to understand what the screening measures before the call happens
• Adult children who received a low priority score on a previous 701S screening and want to request a rescreening with better documentation
• Caregivers whose parent's dementia has progressed and who need to communicate that progression in terms the DOEA system recognizes
• Out-of-state children who will be the informant on the screening call and need to prepare their documentation remotely
• Anyone who was told to "call the Elder Helpline" by a discharge planner, neurologist, or primary care physician and doesn't know what that call actually entails

Who This Is NOT For

• Families whose parent is already enrolled in the SMMC LTC waiver — the initial screening is already complete; ask the ADRC or plan about any required annual or change-in-circumstances rescreening
• Parents who need immediate emergency placement from a hospital — call the ADRC directly; the 701S screening is for planned community-based service access, not same-day crisis placement
• Families whose primary need is financial (Medicaid application, asset protection) rather than waiver service access — the financial eligibility determination is a separate gate handled by DCF, covered in the guide's Medicaid worksheets

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I do the 701S screening myself, or does my parent have to call?

Either the person needing services or a family member / representative can initiate the screening by calling the Elder Helpline. As the caregiver, you should be the primary informant — the person answering the questions about your parent's daily functioning. This is especially important when the care recipient has cognitive impairment, because they'll typically underreport their own deficits. If you're out of state, you can participate by phone.

What happens if we score low on the 701S?

A low priority score places your parent lower on the APCL waitlist, which means a longer wait for SMMC LTC waiver services. A low score does not itself trigger an immediate reassessment; annual rescreening is required to maintain active placement, and you can request an unscheduled rescreening if there's been a "significant change in circumstances" — a documented hospitalization, a wandering incident, a fall resulting in injury, or a measurable decline in ADL function. When requesting the rescreening, provide specific documentation of the change.

Does the 701S screening determine Medicaid eligibility?

No. The 701S determines clinical priority for the SMMC LTC waiver waitlist — it's a needs assessment, not a financial eligibility check. Medicaid financial eligibility is determined separately by the Department of Children and Families (DCF) at Gate 5 of the intake process. You can score high on the 701S and still be ineligible for Medicaid if your parent's income or assets exceed the limits. The guide covers both the clinical and financial eligibility pathways.

How long does the screening take?

Typically 45 minutes to an hour. The caseworker works through a structured form covering ADLs, cognitive symptoms, behavioral indicators, and caregiver circumstances. Having your documentation prepared — the incident log, ADL descriptions, and hospitalization history — makes the call go faster and produces a more accurate score. Without preparation, families tend to give vague answers that the algorithm can't score strongly.

Is there any way to see the 701S form before the screening?

The DOEA 701S form is a state administrative document. Families don't typically receive a copy before the screening. The guide's screening prep section covers each scoring category and the specific functional descriptions that the form is structured to capture, so you know what to prepare even without seeing the form itself. The goal isn't to memorize answers — it's to document your parent's actual condition in terms the screening tool can score accurately.

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