CDHCI in Alberta — plain language

What CDHCI actually is

CDHCI stands for Client-Directed Home Care Invoicing. It is the program Alberta uses to let eligible clients arrange authorized home care through a provider of their choice, while the invoicing side goes directly to Alberta Blue Cross on behalf of Alberta Health Services. It is a way to pair personal choice with publicly funded hours — not a separate private-pay program, and not a replacement for AHS-coordinated services.

Where the pieces live

• Alberta Health Services assesses the client, authorizes hours, and issues the client a package that describes their approved service plan.
• Alberta Blue Cross handles invoicing. Providers submit claims; Blue Cross reimburses on an approved rate and schedule.
• The authorized provider (an agency or a platform like Polymorphism, once approved) delivers the hours, tracks them, and invoices.
• The client or family chooses the provider from the authorized list and remains involved in how services are scheduled and staffed.

Typical timing and handoffs

In practice, a family's first experience of CDHCI usually runs through an AHS case manager — often triggered by a hospital discharge, a home-care reassessment, or a family-initiated call for support. The case manager produces the authorization, and the family selects an approved provider. From there, the provider's intake process should match AHS expectations: confirmed hours, documented ADLs, a care plan with enough detail to support visit-level verification, and a way to track compliance expiries for every staff member who enters the home.

What a marketplace can and cannot do

A marketplace like Polymorphism can make the private + public combination more legible. It can standardize intake, surface caregiver skills and availability, record EVV-ready visit data, and generate Blue Cross-compatible claim rows. What it cannot do — and should never pretend to do — is approve eligibility, set rates, or promise coverage outside the authorized service plan. Marketing that blurs those lines creates compliance risk for the operator and confusion for the family.

Practical tips for Alberta families

• Keep your AHS case manager contact information in one place, with your authorization document, so every provider can align to the same service plan.
• Expect any authorized provider to ask about ADLs, medical complexity, cultural / language preferences, and schedule windows — that structured intake protects you.
• If you want hours beyond the CDHCI allocation, ask the provider how private pay rates are separated from CDHCI invoicing so nothing is double-billed.

Practical tips for providers

• Carry the provider number on every claim line, and keep visit records (EVV timestamps, geofence audit trail, shift notes) available for Blue Cross requests.
• Use a stable claim reference format so reconciliation is trivial when Blue Cross responds with acceptance or denial details.
• Separate private-pay hours from CDHCI hours at the schedule level, not at the invoice level — mistakes show up downstream otherwise.

Who to contact

For eligibility, assessment, or service plan questions, the Alberta Health Services Continuing Care contact for your zone is the right first call. For provider registration or invoicing questions, Alberta Blue Cross administers the CDHCI program and can walk you through authorization requirements. Polymorphism is happy to point you to the public portal for either — and to help with the operational layer once you are authorized.