Richard's Blog

 Archive for the ‘Baseball’ Category

We spend tremendous time and effort to make sure that documentation is done properly and honestly for people serving people with developmental disabilities. Agenices have many committees which review and take seriously each instance of injury and especially if there is potential for abuse and neglect.

In addition, states have medicaid inspector general’s office which  look into the accuracy of data to make sure that services were properly delivered and documentation is accurate.

Agency employees – who are working tremendous hours and relatively low in pay and recognition compared to many other jobs in society – are trained that all information must be accurate. Even if it makes them look bad or they could otherwise cover something up -they are supposed to be accurate in their reporting.

What does it say to all of these people when Derek Jeter fakes an injury from a ball that hit his bat but he pretended hit his arm or elbow. What message does this send to people (not that I am naive after all the steriod scandals) to think that someone who people treat as the great Yankee hero has admitted to “acting” about getting hit by the pitch and being injured.

Employees and users of Therap could lose their jobs if they in effect told authority figures (which an umpire is) that there was an injury or abuse (hit by pitch?) when there wasn’t.

There are some who will say that this is no different than Gaylord Perry getting into the Hall of Fame for throwing a spitter. I am not sure – but it seems that one is doing something against the rules and the other involves faking an injury to authority.  Maybe I have spent too much time involved with trying to perfect documentation for inspector general offices and CMS that this seems worse.

I read an interesting blog post on FanGraphs attempting to quantify the potential benefit of Yankees Manager Joe Girardi pinchrunning Freddy Guzman for Alex Rodriquez in the 9th inning of a baseball game (excerpted below)

Now, we have to eliminate all the plays where speed won’t really matter – either runner could easily score on a ball that gets to the wall, given that they’d be running on contact with two outs. Neither runner likely scores on a blooper down the line that just finds the chalk or a ground ball past the first baseman that hooks into the corner. The ball has to get past the outfielders for there to be a play at the plate, but not so far past them that they couldn’t get it back in fast enough to make it close at home.
So now we’re talking about a fraction of those one in twenty odds. The real odds of that one specific play happening? One in 50? One in 75? It’s somewhere in there.

I must admit that I find those type of mathematical analyses more interesting that most. But the reason for this post is not to disseminate information about Yankee pinchrunning decisions. And its not to just mention baseball in a Therap blog post- as Justin has not tagged the Mets since June 9.

I started thinking about how much essentially free societal statistical analyses and resources are employed analyzing baseball decisions when compared with equivalent analyses regarding providing services to people with developmental disabilities. Obviously if a baseball fan blogs about a decision it doesn’t really help one team or the other gain an advantage – as the information is available to the public and both teams. But it can help provide better information to both teams.

Many other industries are using predictive markets or monitoring twitter to help in decisions.

To what extent is this happening with services and supports to people with developmental disabilities.
I did some google searches and came up with the following results

Baseball strategy blogs – 13,400,000 responses
Electronic Signature Blogs 1,060,000 responses
Baseball blogs – 53,400,000
Developmental Disability Blogs 323,000

Obviously if there really were 323,000 interesting blogs with analysis of services, supports, management issues, family issues and other topics regarding and analyzing developmental disability that would be more than enough to create some additional useful ideas – that could be implemented by more people than just say Joe Girardi deciding not to pinch-run for Alex Rodriquez in the future.
Keep in mind that many google searches return results like this for Missouri developmental disabilities electronic signature blogs – meaning the google search really is just combining the keywords and really has to do with other issues.

Missouri School of Journalism: Seven to Receive the Prestigious …
Aug 4, 2009 … The Missouri School of Journalism has awarded the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished … history and overcoming developmental disabilities. … which recognizes outstanding achievements in electronic journalism. … sports, technology and other subjects with signature wit and irreverence. …
www.journalism.missouri.edu/news/…/08-04-honor-medals.html – Cached – Similar

And that was about the 2nd item on the list.

But if blogs and other websites are replacing old fashioned journalism – as people like Jeff Jarvis are saying – then where are the investigative reports on how various states are dealing with electronic signatures with regard to provision of service to people with developmental disabilities. Many states have increased their analyses of records through some sort of Medicaid Inspector General or other audit procedure. States require forms to be signed contemporaneously with services in many cases. With wet ink signatures there are limits to certain audit trails. How are agencies – both governmental and private provider – balancing the tradeoffs and benefits between wet-ink and electronic documentation.
If there are lots of books and blogs about whether to walk a batter in the 9th inning of a tie game- why is there such limited analysis of signature signoffs in an industry that spends perhaps $60 billion in federal and state money annually. What sort of analysis has been done regarding how much time people spend driving paper around. Could you imagine if people – in their recreational free time and being aware of HIPAA and PHI and sensitive to agency confidentiality and other concerns –commented on how much time they spend driving paper around – and how with better or different procedures they could have saved time to spend with the people they support – or saved overtime dollars or saved gasoline.