Updated September 17, 2026. Quick answer: In Indiana, a Medicaid nursing-facility resident’s Personal Needs Allowance is $52.00/Month, the amount of their own income they keep for personal use each month, with the rest going to the facility as the patient-pay amount toward the cost of care. That is well above the $30/month federal floor set in 1988 and never raised since. Indiana Health Coverage Programs Policy Manual, Chapter 2800 (Income), Section 2840.10.10 states the figure directly.
Why Indiana’s figure isn’t the federal floor
Federal Medicaid law requires only a $30-a-month personal needs allowance as a floor; a state is free to set its own, higher figure by statute, regulation, or agency policy. Indiana has done exactly that, setting $52.00/Month.
What the allowance covers, and what it doesn’t
The personal needs allowance pays for the things a facility’s daily rate doesn’t cover: clothing, haircuts, snacks, a phone or television, small personal purchases. It is deducted before the rest of a resident’s income is applied to the facility bill as the patient-pay (or post-eligibility treatment of income, PETI) amount. It is not extra money on top of what Medicaid already pays the facility; it is the one slice of a resident’s own income that Medicaid rules guarantee the resident, not the facility, keeps.
One exception or caveat worth knowing
This figure appears as an aside inside a VA Aid & Attendance section of Indiana FSSA’s own operative policy manual rather than in a section dedicated solely to the personal needs allowance, and no explicit effective-date line accompanies it; a footnote reference in the source manual (which would likely cite IC 12-15-7-2) was not captured in the archived extraction. This is nonetheless the first primary Indiana source found that states the $52 dollar figure directly in its own prose, rather than only cross-referencing another section by citation.
| Federal personal needs allowance floor | $30.00/month |
| Indiana’s personal needs allowance | $52.00/Month |
| How far above the federal floor (calculated by comparing this state’s own figure to the $30.00 federal floor) | 73% higher |
| State citation | Indiana Health Coverage Programs Policy Manual, Chapter 2800 (Income), Section 2840.10.10 |
| What it says | “A veteran or veteran’s widow is entitled to keep the normal personal needs allowance (currently set at $52 [footnote 29]) given to institutionalized members without regard to the $90.” |
| Federal floor citation | 42 CFR § 435.725 (the federal $30.00/month personal needs allowance floor) |
Figures verified against the Indiana Health Coverage Programs Policy Manual, Chapter 2800 (in.gov/fssa), 42 U.S.C. 1396a(q) (Cornell LII) and 42 CFR 435.725 (eCFR) on September 30, 2026; the manual footnote behind the $52 figure (IC 12-15-7-2) could not be read and was not re-checked.
Every citation on this page was read directly from the state’s own Medicaid agency, administrative code, or official eligibility manual this session. General information, not legal or financial advice; a figure this specific can change with a budget cycle or a rule amendment, and a facility or state caseworker has the final say on any individual case.