Updated August 27, 2026. Quick answer: Alaska is the one state in this series that does not use a statewide number at all. Its manual divides by the average monthly cost to a private patient of nursing home care in the individual’s community, and where the community cannot be determined it falls back to the current swing-bed rate set by the Office of Rate Review. There is no single Alaska divisor to publish, by design.
What Alaska publishes
| What the state lists | Figure |
|---|---|
| What the manual divides by | the average monthly cost to a private patient of nursing home care in the individual’s community |
| Where that rate comes from | the community in which the individual is institutionalized |
| Fallback when the community cannot be determined | the current swing-bed rate |
| Who sets that fallback rate | the Division of Health Care Services, Office of Rate Review |
| The section that states it | 554 |
| Treatment of a remainder | a partial month disqualification |
| Partial-month days | rounded down |
| What sets the look-back date | the application date or the date of institutionalization, whichever is LATER |
| Overlapping penalty periods | combined into a single penalty period |
| Alaska Native and American Indian real property | excluded from a transfer of asset penalty entirely |
| Current statewide dollar figure | none exists – see below |
How the penalty period is calculated
- Section 554 of the ADLTC manual states the division: add the uncompensated value of each transfer in the look-back period, then “Divide the total uncompensated value for all transfers by the average monthly cost to a private patient of nursing home care in the individual’s community.”
- That is a local rate, not a state one, and it is the reason this page publishes no figure. The manual says the calculation “is based on the monthly nursing home rate in the community in which the individual is institutionalized”, so two Alaskans who gave away the same amount can serve different penalties.
- Where the community cannot be worked out, the manual names a specific fallback: use the current swing-bed rate as determined by the Division of Health Care Services, Office of Rate Review, provided to eligibility workers by Division of Public Assistance Policy on request.
- A remainder becomes a partial month disqualification rather than being rounded to a whole month, and the partial-month days are rounded down when they are added to the whole months.
- The look-back date is set by whichever came later: the date the individual applies for long-term care services, or the date the individual is institutionalized. The manual’s own example makes the point – someone who entered a facility in June and applied in July has the look-back set by the July application date.
- The penalty starts once the individual is institutionalized and eligible for Medicaid, and then runs continuously through to the end of the penalty period even if they stop receiving institutional level of care.
- Where transfers would produce overlapping penalty periods, the manual combines the uncompensated value of all the assets transferred and computes a single penalty period rather than stacking them.
- Real property in Alaska owned by an Alaska Native or American Indian is excluded outright – the manual says it is excluded from being a countable resource or as a potential transfer of asset penalty, and that includes the land and any structures on it.
Once you have the figure above, the Medicaid penalty period calculator does the arithmetic. This page is the Alaska rate record; the calculator is the class parent.
What this page does not settle
- There is no Alaska divisor to publish, and that is a finding rather than a gap in the research. The manual keys the figure to the applicant’s own community, so a single statewide number would misstate the rule even if one were quoted accurately.
- The manual does contain $9,630, and this page deliberately does not present it as Alaska’s rate. It appears four times and every one of them is inside a worked example – Example 8, where Mr. Reed’s community rate is $9,630, and Example 9, where Mr. McFarland’s is the same. An example figure is not a published rate.
- The swing-bed fallback is not published on the page either, because the manual does not print it: it says the rate is determined by the Office of Rate Review and provided to eligibility workers on request, which is not a public figure this page can verify.
- Because the rate is local and supplied case by case, the only way to get the operative number for a specific file is from the Division of Public Assistance for that community. Commercial sites that quote a single Alaska divisor are describing something the manual does not use.
- The examples in the retrieved copy are set in 2018 to 2021, which dates the illustrative figures rather than the rule. The method itself is what this page reports.
Eligibility is decided by the state agency on the whole file, not by this one number. Nothing here is legal advice, and no one should transfer, retitle or give away property on the strength of a worksheet.
Sources
Each source above was retrieved and read against the state text on August 27, 2026. Every figure on this page was checked against those bytes.
Related: Alaska’s Medicaid home equity limit for a single applicant with no spouse or dependent child at home.