Richard's Blog

 Archive for the ‘New York’ Category

Therap will be hosting a conference on May15-16, 2012 in Elmira, Chemung County, NY for agencies serving people with Developmental Disabilities and interacting with OPWDD and OMIG. This will be held in the Finger Lakes DDSO but will be appropriate for people from various DDSO’s.

A reminder that Therap has a conference in Cortland, NY coming in November 2012 and also our National Conference in East Hanover, NJ which is in the New York metro area.   We also will be having a conference in Buffalo, NY in August 2012.  The location of an expected November 2012 New York conference will be announced later.

The Elmira conference will be at the Elmira Riverview Holiday Inn.

Additional information is available or will be available on these conferences on our website.

We will be hosting a Therap Information Session in downtown Brooklyn, NY for OMRDD providers on July 25, 2010.

I would like to thank Claudia Morgan of Cay Community Services and the Brooklyn Multicultural Task Force for helping to arrange this.

Topics will include specific NY OMRDD / OMIG issues such as

a) electronic signatures and OMRDD/OMIG
b) documentation for MSCs,
c) integration of billing and service delivery,
d) online IPOPs, Res-Hab and Day-Hab plans, incident reporting

There will also be more general topics such as
a) sharing data with families,
b) health tracking including online medication administration records,
c) tracking training management and more.

Registration is free and we will provide lunch.  Additional information is on our website.

Today I am going to the YAI conference in New York. In addition to New York issues such as OMIG and OMRDD compiance – they have a mix of national attendees as well.

Today I will be there with Kris and Jason.

This is actually the one conference held each year I can walk to from my house.

Kevin recently posted a picture showing his view from his house in Hawaii. That really gives a sense of the breadth of locations where Therap team members live and have knowledge of.

This picture was taken across the street at Washington Square Park in New York City today.  It was a little more challenging checking emails on my droid through the snowfall – but I was able to stay in touch while having snowball fights with the kids.

I still don’t think they one ever needs a snow day in New York City – but that is based on being able to walk or take a subway everywhere.

We had our first New York City User Group meeting today. Thanks to Services for the Underserved for hosting and refreshments.

Other agencies in attendence included Cardinal McCloskey Services, Cay Community Services Organization, and Center for Family Support.

Jim Kelly, Justin Brockie (via phone) and I presented with discussions on a range of New York topics including billing, reshab plans, medicaid service coordination, ISPs and more.

As it always seems in New York, a good discussion was held on OMRRD and OMIG and policies of electronic signatures.

The group was already discussing future meetings. So look for announcements of date and time.

We recently posted information about a New York City User Group meeting for November 20 to be hosted by Services for the Underserved.

Our user groups are often held as webinars over the phone and internet. We also hold many meetings in person. We recently held meetings in Buffalo and Monitcello New York as well as Washington DC and Hartford, CT.

One benefit for me personally for a New York City User Group is that the meeting will be close enough to my house that I could actually walk to the meeting after dropping my kids at school and still be on time. I will probably take the subway though -as it is about 3 miles from where I live.

The New York meetings will have a mix of national and local issues – including using Therap to help comply with OMRDD regulations, discussions of electronic signature issues in New York, medicaid service coordinator issues and more topics.

There is a longer list on the site including phone user groups for North Dakota and South Dakota. The Oregon user group will be incorporated into the conference being held in Salem, Oregon in 2 weeks.  And of course we have our annual national provider administrator conference coming up in Fishkill, NY in February

Click to view at full size

I spent most of today driving to and from Albany to attend the NYSARC Convention in Albany.

I had a number of interesting conversations both at the NYSARC conference and on the drive home regarding what is required for OMRDD electronic signatures.

Therap meets federal and New York State requirements on electonic signatures. But what is interesting is the lack of clear cut guidelines in the minds of many providers on what OMRDD or OMIG would require. This perceived lack of written guidelines causes providers to take a different perspective on electronic documentation that they would on wet ink documentation. This is even though the federal government has clearly stated that they are moving in the direction of providing bonuses to encourage a movement to electronic health records for example.

While I have written a bit about the OMRDD and OMIG regulations in NY, we are seeing similar issues in many other states. We have done and will be happy to do in the future – presentations and meetings with state auditors, surveyors or other officials questioning electronic signatures on Therap.

We are increasingly asked by people in various states (we now have users in about 40 states) about electronic signature policies.

Therap has been designed to meet federal electronic signature requirements. The problem is that a diminishing number of states still have wet ink requirements.  That means some places still require each page have an original signature – even if they have no idea when the signature was actually put on the piece of paper.

However, what is becoming more frequent is that providers think that wet ink signature is required – when in fact it is not required by a state.

New York State OMRDD recently posted this clarification on their website.

Electronic Signature Clarification
OMRDD verified that the agency and the OMIG will accept Electronic records and Electronic signatures. This has been possible for years, based on OMRDD and OMIG policy documents and practice. OMRDD has agreed to issue clarification within the next 3 to 4 weeks on these issues. OMRDD will also ensure that the OMIG is aware of and agrees with these clarifications.
Some of the issues to be clarified include:

The OMIG verified that Electronic records and signatures are acceptable in an audit, unless regulations specifically require “hand‐written”. Electronic signatures have the same validity as a hand‐written signature. Provider must be able to authenticate that the person supposed to sign did sign.

Electronic records and signatures must meet all standing Medicaid documentation requirements and be maintained for 6 years from the date of service or payment (whichever is longer). The OMIG will not endorse any one vendor or system.

Concern from an auditing perspective is that electronic information may be overwritten. Any electronic records that show evidence of overwriting will be rejected.

The OMIG will require that all electronics records can be reproduced on paper upon request.

Provider Association members requested clarification that electronic signature on ISPs and other documentation are allowable. OMRDD committed to preparing a letter for OMIG
review, and when approved forwarding that letter to the members.

Therap is designed to help agencies meet all of these requirements.