CAMERON, Mo. — Floyd Duncan spent a year and a half living in a nursing home. For the strongly independent 73-year-old Cameron man, that was a year and a half too long.

“I love my privacy,” Mr. Duncan said. “In the nursing home I was in a two-patient room, had to share a toilet and a sink and a community-type shower.”

The shower was just a little hand-held thing, Mr. Duncan added. And you couldn’t just take a shower anytime you wanted.

“Two showers a week didn’t work for me. I wanted one every day, you know,” he said.

Since April 3, Mr. Duncan has been living in a bright but sparsely furnished Cameron apartment with his own recliner, TV, full-sized bed and a shower head with so much pressure that “it about knocked me down,” he said.

Mr. Duncan regained his independence through a Money Follows the Person (MFP) grant. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services awarded the grant to the state of Missouri in 2007 to allow those individuals like Mr. Duncan to move from nursing homes to independent living facilities without losing benefits.

The goal is to provide support for those people with disabilities and allow them to move into a community setting, explained Leslie V. Norwalk, acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services from a press release.

“There is more evidence than ever that people who need long-term care prefer to remain in their own homes and communities whenever possible,” Ms. Norwalk said. “This new program will help states shift Medicaid’s traditional emphasis on institutional care to a system offering greater choices that include home-based services.”

Jason Douglas, a spokesperson for Midland Empire Resources for Independent Living (MERIL), said MFP greatly enhances the services they provide.

“It’s such a wonderful program,” he said. “It gives us an extra tool to helping someone live independently.”

To be eligible for the grant, a person must have been in a facility for at least six months. Medicaid must have paid for services at least one month prior to discharge. The person must also move into qualified housing and sign a Money Follows the Person Participation agreement.

If approved, they are eligible to receive a $2,400 grant to help with moving costs and some furniture expenses.

After four months, Mr. Duncan is still getting adjusted to living on his own. No pictures yet hang on the walls. A vacuum cleaner still sits in the box. And he’s still sorting through a slew of mail spread out on his dining room table from his old address. But it’s all worth it, especially now that he gets to sleep late if he wants to. Not so in a nursing home, he said.

“If I wanted to sleep in, forget it. They come around and wake me up to give me my pills,” he said.

Alonzo Weston can be reached

at alonzow@npgco.com.