Richard's Blog

 Archive for the ‘Therap Conferences’ Category

Therap will be hosting a Regional Conference in Florida December 4-5, 2012. The conference will be at the Palm Beach Airport Holiday Inn.

There will be specific sessions on agencies using Therap and working with APD.

Additional information will be available on our website in the coming months.

I will be attending the Side-by-Side conference in Minnesota October19-21. It should be a really interesting conference. In addition to College of Direct Support,  Rest Assured and Web Footed Friends, we will have sessions with CARF. 

In addition you will be able to meet and talk with the authors of the CDS curriculum
from the University of Minnesota. The Institute on Community
Integration (ICI) at the university, led by Dr. Charlie Lakin, produces
and authors all CDS courses.  Those who may attend are Amy Hewitt,
Kristin Dean, Nancy McCulloh, Susan O’Nell, Derek Nord, Lori Sedlezky,
and Matt Bogenshutz.  You can look at the conference session schedule to
see when each will be presenting.

The evening activity will include visiting the Mall of America in Minneapolis. 

We also have two regional conferences coming soon. One in Maine October 25-26 and one in Oregon November 15-16. Both of those conference are more geared to existing users. 

It’s not too late to start thinking about our national provider administrator conference in Fishkill, NY February 8-10, 2011. 

Finally, we will be hosting some Therap Information Sessions around New York State for OPWDD agencies in November. These will be in Elmira, Syracuse and Buffalo. These are more geared for potential users to learn about Therap.

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.

We are having a bit of a challenge in communicating the various Therap conferences, user groups and Therap Information Sessions.

I received an email today from an agency in Fargo, North Dakota asking if our conference for June 2-3, 2010 in Fargo was still on.  Which it is – but it was hard to find on the website.

Our front banner listed our next Side-by-Side Technology in Kansas City, Missouri with College of Direct Support, Rest Assured and joined with participation by CARF and Web Footed Friends.

We have the North Dakota conference listed but you need a few clicks to get there.

Also Montana -

And coming soon Side by Side Technology VI in Baltimore, MD July 27-29, 2010.

Remember there are basically 3 types of conferences Therap runs.

Our national provider administrator conference which is a national conference next held in February 2011 in Fishkill, NY. This conference will have over 10 simultaneous sessions with over 200 total sessions with topics for beginning, intermediate and advanced Therap users. Topics cover everything from using individual modules to agency policies to system development issues.

The Side-by-Side Technology Conferences (such as the upcoming Kansas City, Missouri and Baltimore, Maryland conferences) are run jointly with College of Direct Support with Rest Assured as a sponsor and participants including CARF and Web Footed Friends. These conferences have introductory and intermediate sessions for Therap and College of Direct Support users. They also have introductory sessions for non-users of all participants at the session. There are also state specific sessions based on geographical location (for example a session on Electronic Signatures in Missouri).  These conferences are particularly appropriate for potential users and newer customers.

Our regional conferences are training conferences geared to a range of users at agencies. There are state specific sessions often in conjunction with state agencies – such as in Montana. There are typically 3 or 4 simultaneous sessions covering a range of modules.

User group meetings – can be either in person or via the telephone. Typically user groups can range from a couple of hours to most of a day depending on location. Telephone user groups generally cover a state while in person user groups are often a region (Western Missouri, Central Missouri, Western New York, New York City, Hudson Valley, Southeast Connecticut, etc).

Therap Information Sessions are designed for Therap Customers to invite friends to hear about Therap.

We look forward to seeing you at an appropriate event.

What a hectic couple of weeks of ideas and discussions and conferences this has been.

We had our best conference ever. (I am already talking with the hotel about the 2011 provider administrator conference – and we have our next side-by-side technology conference with College of Direct Support in Kansas City, Missouri in May).

We had discussions on major issues which Justin summarized quite nicely in his blog including Access Simplification, Multi-Access Provider System, and Cross Organization Information Sharing.

Lots of discussions on Electronic Signatures.  A lot of information on OMRDD requirements for electronic signatures in New York. I am looking forward to the Missouri conference and having equally intense conversations about electronic signatures with Therap users in Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Arkansas and other states.

It was also our one time each year that the whole Therap team gets together in one place.  It was also nice to have had discussions and spend time with people like Bonnie, Bryan, Bill, Vanessa and so many others. And Cheryl and Terry who may have been the only people who remember Therap from before 5.0.  We missed Renee- and hope she feels better for next years conference. It wasn’t the same without you.

In terms of next year – we look forward to even more sessions and discussions. Although now that we put together a schedule with sesssions running through lunch- i will add that 15 minutes back to at least get the food to bring to the sessions. And Justin has even agreed to discuss my planning evening sessions.

We received an email from the Hampton Inn across the parking lot from the Holiday Inn where the provider administrator conference is being held that they now have rates at $79 if you ask for Therap. Their phone number is 845-896-4000.

We  do not have a contract with the hotel – so we are passing this information on.  I assume it is subject to change.

If anyone has any questions or problems with finding hotels please let us know.

No matter where people stay – it should be a great conference.

The conference is looking to be the biggest  Therap Conference with more sessions on more topics than ever.

All 3 days will have full agendas covering brainstorming, user panels and instructional sessions on modules. The daily themes are designed to highlight a bit  on what the initial session will cover – plus there are some extra sessions regarding the daily theme.

But with 9 simultaneous sessions, you can probably spend an entire day at the conference and not hear a word about the days theme if you chose to.

If you have questions on who might be appropriate to send to the confernece based on topics you are interested in hearing about – please let us know and we would be happy to discuss.

The hotel block will be closing shortly. Last year the hotel sold out with fewer attendees. So if you want to stay at the conference hotel and get the room rate, call soon.

We are excited to have Sheila Gschwind from SMC Partners and John DeStefano from Hartford Hospital presenting as part of our Digital Health portion of the Therap National Provider Administrator Conference February 2-4, 2010.

They will be talking about a number of topics including the Connecticut E-Health Initiative which includes a Health Information Exchange using HL7 protocols. They will discuss the pilot project which includes Therap customers.

Hartford Hospital’s website states it is

central Connecticut’s leading tertiary medical center with a world class medical staff, supported by over 7,000 extraordinary nurses and staff members.

SMC Partners Projects Include

• Project management for Connecticut’s Regional Health Information Organization. eHealthConnecticut is a not for profit entity incorporated to create, champion and sustain a secure statewide health information exchange that will dramatically improve the safety, efficiency and quality of health care in Connecticut. Leaders representing physicians, providers, purchasers, payers, academia, quality organizations, government and other stakeholders established the organization as a collaborative approach to meeting    the challenges of Health Information Technology adoption and interoperability across Connecticut

• »	Program and project management, process design and client implementations for nationwide subspecialty teleradiology company

• »	Assessment of information management systems and processes for a large multi-specialty physician group, including lab and radiology ancillary services

• »	Designed, implemented and supported a web-based patient activity tracking system that enhances patient service and provides quality and outcomes measurements for a regional breast care program

• »	Project management services to assist with a Federal demonstration contract for transformation of clinical guidelines into XML format for integration with ambulatory EHR systems

Stay tuned for more information on other speakers and sessions at the Therap National Provider Administrator Conference.

Therap will be hosting a conference in Helena, Montana from June 7 to June 8, 2010 at the Holiday Inn. Additional information will be posted on our website soon.

Therap will also be hosting a conference in Fargo, North Dakota from June 2 to June 3, 2010 at the Ramada.  There will be special sessions covering issues related to North Dakota, Minnesota and South Dakota.

These  conferences have more limited sessions as compared with the Therap National Provider Administrator Conference in Fishkill, NY February 2-4, 2010.    We urge agencies to continue to plan to send their provider administrators to the national provider administrator conference.

(note this was edited from the original when we changed a date for the ND conference.)

We expect to be offering a professionally guided bus tour of New York City on February 3, 2010 during our National Provider Administrator Conference. We expect to offer 2 bus choices that night. The other will be a trip like previous years where basically people will have pizza, a non-guided drive around Manhattan and then time to walk around Times Square.
Signups will be at the February conference – but early paid registrations will have priority on choice of buses.
Other than the bus trip to New York City- the conference will basically be 9 simultaneous interesting sessions over 3 days on various topics related to Therap, electronic documentation, electronic signatures, health information exchanges and other related topics.