Barry Pollack's Blog

 DDNA 2012 – “Are We There Yet”

The 2012 Conference began with the PreConference on May 4^th, with the Conference held May 5^th - 7^th. The Conference was held at the beautiful Rosen Plaza Hotel in Orlando, FL.   There was good attendance and it was an inspiring Conference which was opened by 10 year old girl who had a voice of a powerful angel.  This young girl was diagnosed with Autism and did not speak until she was 3 years old.  She thanked all the Nurses for the difference they make in the lives of children like her.  There wasn’t a dry eye in the room, including mine!

It was great having so many Nurses and others who are Therap Customers come over to our exhibit and say “Hello”!  I met so many wonderful, dedicated professionals and enjoyed sharing Therap Services with many interested folks across the Country!

I look forward to working with many new providers on reviewing and implementing Therap in their organizations and as always, supporting our faithful existing Therap Users to enhance their use, benefit and the further development of Therap Services for everyone!

APD Continues Cost Containment Efforts

Tallahassee — On April 1, Agency for Persons with Disabilities (APD) will reduce the rates it pays for therapy assessments and all nursing services to the standard rate paid by the Medicaid State Plan. Currently, the APD Home and Community-Based Services Medicaid waiver pays higher rates for most of these services.

This rate change is the latest cost containment effort by APD to work toward bringing waiver expenses closer to the agency’s Legislative appropriation for the waiver.

The Legislature approved $810 million for APD’s Home and Community-Based Services Medicaid waiver for the 2011-12 state fiscal year that began on July 1. APD customers received $930 million worth of services last year.

While the agency is working to reduce Medicaid waiver expenditures, it is also looking for opportunities to increase waiver flexibility and equity for customers with the new iBudget Florida waiver. More than 3,000 APD customers in North Florida have transitioned to the new iBudget waiver which allows families to shift funding around to meet their current priorities.

APD annually serves more than 50,000 Floridians with developmental disabilities of autism, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, intellectual disabilities, spina bifida, and Prader-Willi syndrome. The agency’s Medicaid waiver helps to support about 30,000 individuals with developmental disabilities so they may live and participate in their local communities. Those 30,000 people will all be transitioned to the new iBudget Florida waiver by July 2013.

For more information on iBudget, visit the website iBudgetFlorida.org.

For more information on the agency, call 1-866-APD-CARES or visit APDcares.org.

From Suzanne Sewell, CEO of Florida Association of Rehabilitation Facilities:

The Conference Committee on Health Care Appropriations met today at noon.

The Senate agreed with the House position regarding funding of the HCBS waiver. This means an additional $65,116,894 million dollars have been added to the HCBS waiver which is now funded at about $811 million.  If you will recall, our platform requested funding at $865 million, so this is better than we expected since the new funding level will be about $877 million total.  We were also pleased to see that the Issue Title “Resources to Address Waiver Deficit” versus “HCBS Waiver Restructuring.”

About Therap SIGs

The goal of Therap Special Interest Groups (SIGs) is to provide a knowledge sharing platform for members of the developmental disabilities community, concerned with quality assurance, EHR and other issues related to electronic documentation, communication and reporting. We encourage our users to join this group and share their valuable insights regarding these issues with us and other members of the community.

This exchange of thoughts, knowledge and best practices would help us better understand the issues you face and address them accordingly.

 Click a box to register!

Carolina Autism Supported Living Services in Charleston South Carolina has found a great way to use IPads in their group homes for documenting in Therap!  Here is a description and pictures from Phil Blevins, Executive Director:

“We used iPadWallBracket.com for the enclosure. There are many other sites with similar products but this seemed best for our purposes. We chose the enclosure that covers the “home” button. Then we installed a Kiosk program on the iPad. We chose Kiosk Pro from the Apple store. It’s free but there is a paid version with more features. We set the Therap login page as the start page and limited the kiosks browsing range to the therap domain. There are a few things I could note about setting it up if you ever want details.

We mounted the enclosure to a rolling laptop stand from Office Depot. Since it is plastic we chose not to drill holes in it but used a metal/plastic polymer adhesive to attach the enclosure.

We used iPads with WiFi instead of 3g so we have to make sure there is a working wireless router in the houses. And I’ve noticed that the iPad can’t handle the pop-up body image when entering skin/wound notes. But the staff person can still choose body parts from the drop-down menu. There may be other iPad quirks but we haven’t run into them yet.”

        

In preparation for Therap Services pre-conference meetings on Monday, some of us came in early on Sunday to catch the Superbowl at a local Sports Bar-Redds, right across the street from the Met-Life Stadium where the Giants and Jets play!  It was sweet victory for New York and very exciting to be in the middle of it all!

We had a great conference with around 350 attendees, 3 days of over 35 sessions including: Basic to Advanced User sessions, Provider Organizations Special Topic sessions and Brainstorming with Therap Programmers! 

Of course, being New York, we always take a trip to “The City” and what a great time of eating pizza, walking around Manhattan to look at the sites!  

If you missed it, you can still get to one of our Regional Conferences this year.  Check out when we are coming to a town near you!

      http://www.therapservices.net/conferences/

This week Kris Keppler, Therap Implementation and Training Specialist provided the staff training for Therap’s first customer in the Charleston, SC Area, Carolina Autism Supported Living Services!

 Visit them at http://www.casls.org

They specialize in supporting individuals and families related to Autism and providing ABA Services: Applied Behavior Analysis!

I met Kris in Charleston on Wednesday evening for dinner, walked old historic Charleston which is a fantastic city and then we did several Demos of Therap in the Region.  The response to Therap was Great!  I expect we will be seeing much growth in Therap around the area and State this year.  Here a few shots of the local area!

For Immediate Release: Contact:

January 31, 2012 Melanie Mowry Etters
Communication Director
850‐488‐4257
APD to Implement iBudget Formula
TALLAHASSEE — The Agency for Persons with Disabilities (APD) is announcing that it will
implement the final component of the iBudget Florida program for its customers in Northwest Florida
and the Big Bend area by April 1.
iBudget Florida is a new way to deliver Medicaid waiver services that has been approved by both
the Florida Legislature and the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). It provides
Floridians with developmental disabilities in the Medicaid waiver program more flexibility in choosing
their services.
The April 1 transition will include APD customers living in Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, Walton,
Bay, Gulf, Calhoun, Jackson, Washington, Holmes, Franklin, Leon, Wakulla, Gadsden, Liberty, Madison,
Taylor, and Jefferson counties, which comprise APD's areas 1 and 2.
APD customers in areas 1 and 2 have been using the iBudget Florida program since October 2011.
Customers in other areas of the state will be enrolled into the program later this year. An enrollment
schedule will be announced soon.
iBudget Florida is designed to make the funding process fair and equitable for all Medicaid waiver
customers. Waiver support coordinators will assist customers and their families in managing service
approvals and other aspects of the program using an online Web‐based system.
APD annually serves more than 50,000 Floridians with the developmental disabilities of autism,
cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, intellectual disabilities, spina bifida, and Prader‐Willi syndrome. For
more information on this program and the agency, visit iBudgetFlorida.org and APDcares.org or call tollfree
1‐866‐APD‐CARES (1‐866‐273‐2273).

Are you concerned about loosing community services for individuals with disabilities?

Senate Bill 1516 will have a hearing that will be held today at 3:30 p.m. by Senator Storms’ Committee.  This bill amends the DD Act.  For more information, you may go to the Florida ARF website, www.floridaarf.org,  grassroots page and click on the grassroots summary document on Saving DD Services.

 http://www.floridaarf.org/vendorimages/farf/saveddservices.pdf