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An Overview of Policies and Procedures Considerations for Direct Support Professionals
We are pleased to announce our free Certified Trainer led webinar which will be held on Aug 4 at 1pm EDT. Certified Trainer, Tamela Rystrom, will walk users through establishing policies and procedures for direct professionals based on her experience as Executive Director of California Community Opportunities. You may be a new user or longstanding user, having tips, reminders, and policy considerations for your DSPs is always a great topic for learning and discussions
Click here to register.
ABLE Act Passed in GA
HB 768, Georgia’s Achieving a Better Life Experience (ABLE) Act, was passed by the Georgia General Assembly this session and signed into law by Governor Deal on May 3, 2016, thanks to the efforts of a coalition of more than 35 advocacy organizations led by All About Developmental Disabilities (AADD) with the assistance of Autism Speaks and the Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities (GCDD).
The ABLE Act is a law passed by Congress in December 2014 with strong bipartisan support. It amends the Internal Revenue Code to allow for tax advantaged savings account like the 529 higher education savings accounts we have had in Georgia for many years. The primary purpose of an ABLE account is to allow people with serious […]
Person Centered Excellence
How do we monitor success in the services that we provide? We all enter a lot of data every day into Therap, but how are you using it? Do you look at health care reports to see if a person is gaining or losing weight? Do you monitor how many times the person has been to the doctor with the flu in the past few years? How does the data “speak to you” so that you are providing person centered services to the people you support? Just food for thought…Happy Therap-ing.
Learners Curve
Within weeks of learning the Therap system, I was a guru! I was in Geek Heaven. Now I just need some assistance to get through implementation of the Individual Support Plan. Is there a way to modify this?
Only 3 Weeks Away!
Happy January to you all from us here at Tobosa Developmental Services in Roswell, NM. I wanted to start the New Year off by expressing how very excited I am about the National Conference in Vancouver, WA! We were lucky enough to get selected to do 3 presentations during the conference. I am looking forward to networking with new people and to seeing some great familiar faces. We will be taking a group of 6 from here (including Bill Jones and I – who will both be presenting). What an awesome experience we had at the other conferences we attended and we have no doubts that this one will be just as awesome.
One of the things we […]
Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Billing!
Hopefully by now everyone is working out the “kinks” in their ICD-10 codes. I have learned from other providers that a “parent” diagnosis of an Intellectual Disability is needed (F70, F71, F72, etc.) instead of a diagnosis of autism or other disabilities. In order to get paid for a service that is strictly for individuals with intellectual disabilities, you must have a diagnosis of an intellectual disability. If you do not have a primary diagnosis, you need to get one as soon as possible. So far, we have had smooth billing! Hope everyone else is having success as well!
Certified Trainer Reminders for 2016
Hi All,
I certainly hope your day /week is off to a fantastic start! This is just a friendly reminder to take a look at your Certified Trainer Checklist and confirm that you have done what’s needed to maintain your certification OR at least verify you’re on track to meet the requirements prior to its expiration. I’ve included the certified trainer checklist below:
http://support.therapservices.net/download/attachments/2031675/Certified+Trainer+Checklist–revised+2.17.15.pdf
I am planning for 2016 and want to ensure I have all your webinar topics, dates, times logged and posted on our website. You can literally train in just about any Therap related modules and/ or industry topics (i.e. ICD-10, State specific regs, Transitioning to an Electronic Health Record system, HIPPA, etc..)
Just so you know, your webinars and blogs […]
ICD10 Codes Causing Issues
For any providers who have not billed using the new ICD10 codes, claims that include diagnosis codes for unspecified intellectual disabilities are not being paid. I also spoke with a local physician who is having trouble with his billing because he stated that he has to know the cause of the illness before he can select the correct diagnosis code. For example, if a patient has pharyngitis, he would need to know if it is bacterial or viral. So more tests have to be order in order to select the right code – there is no unspecified code anymore. But, while he is ordering the additional (and costly) tests, he cannot bill the current appointment because he is awaiting the […]
Becoming a New Therap Trainer
I just wanted to take a moment and say I’m so honored to finally join the Therap Certified Trainer team. I can’t wait to get blog posts going and schedule some webinars in the future. I know there is so much more for me to learn, and I’m excited for this new adventure. My favorite part of Therap has always been training new employees and spreading excitement about the system, so I’m looking forward to reaching more users and sharing some methods we use in our agency here in Hunterdon County, NJ.
Chat soon!
Tips for Presentations/Overview of Cert. Trainer Program
Hi Trainers!
I certainly hope you enjoyed the webinar regarding the certified trainer program and tips for preparing for your presentations. As I was creating the PowerPoint for this webinar, I deviated slightly from what the topic suggested as it was a great chance to speak to new and old trainers alike. I couldn’t pass up that opportunity so, thank you for hanging in there!
I certainly hope that the “orientation” piece was a great refresher for some and covered any lingering questions for new Trainers. Speaking of “New” we have about 10+ new trainers added to the program since January. OWW!!! Please take an opportunity to reach out to them and give any useful advice ( I will create a separate […]
ICD-10 Conversion
In less than a week, the transition from ICD-9 number to ICD-10 will be fully implemented through CMS. I hope everyone is ready and has mapped their diagnosis codes on their prior authorizations. Therap updated the billing module through the 2015.0.24 update to meet these standards. For more information, you can read the release notes posted on the Therap web site. Happy claims everyone!
For more information on the transition: https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Coding/ICD10/ProviderResources.html?gclid=CLeJhveqksgCFUg7gQodojkO8A
How to incorporate the Individual Home Page at your agency
Lorelei Glenn, Certified Trainer, did an AMAZING job walking Therap users through the Individual home page. The individual home page allows users to find and document a wide range of person-centered information regarding an Individual’s background, support plans, health information, incident reporting and activities. Lorelei really showed how the Individual Home Page is a “One Stop Shop” for staff and administrators alike!
If you missed the live webinar, we recorded it JUST for you! Enjoy!
You’ve got to fight for your right to…know exactly who has looked at your PHI!
Last month I had the great pleasure to join with some of the nation’s most esteemed Therap users along with many fantastic Therap employees. It was the perfect storm of a Therap nerd in a Therap candy shop! What more could I ask from life? It was an awesome couple of days of discussion and insight into the plethora of Therap features and developments. Some people have stamp collections, some go to comic book conventions; I have Therap conferences. Don’t judge.
One day, the topic of how do you grant access to state auditors came up and I nonchalantly stated ‘we have set up generic reviewer accounts…’ And a communal gasp sucked the air out of the room. Murmurs could be […]
What Everyone’s Talking About In The Certified Trainer World
Hi Certified Trainers,
Can you believe that we are more than half-way through the year? I want to extend a huge “Thank You” for all the webinars that have been conducted to date. We have had some very high registration number and positive feedback surrounding the webinars presented. I owe all the presenters a special “Thank You” for your time and efforts as it relates to supporting our Therap community.
For the second half of this year, I would like to continue the momentum. If you haven’t scheduled your webinars to fulfill your certification, please forward your topic(s), date(s), and time(s) as soon as possible.
What Everyone’s Talking About In The Certified Trainer World: Conferences and Webinars
Here are some great topic ideas:
• Creative […]
ISP Program Fun
Mary Lawson, a Therap Certified Trainer, presented operative methods to use Therap to track effective, efficient service provisions using the ISP Program Module. The ISP program module is one of the most flexible modules within Therap, thus this webinar is sure to be informative. Mary showed how to export data from a clinician report and create a pivot table to analyze isp data. I certainly hope you enjoy!
Behavior Tracking Basics
Today, Deanna covered the Behaviors Support Plan (BSP), Behaviors Event Record (BER), and the Time Tracking module. Below is a link to the recorded webinar for your reference. Also, I’ve included links to the user guides for the aforementioned modules:
Recorded Webinar:
BSP: http://support.therapservices.net/display/documentation/Create+New+Behavior+Plan
BER (reporting a behavior has occurred): http://support.therapservices.net/display/documentation/Enter+Behavior+Event+Record
Time Tracking: http://support.therapservices.net/display/documentation/Time+Tracking+For+Administrators
If you have additional questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out to me directly!
Thank you for attending and have a great day!
Quality Assurance for Billing
Hi All,
We have a wonderful webinar published on Therap’s Youtube page which covers “How to use Therap to Support Billing” . The presenter, Jide Amosu, is a Certified Trainer as well as the Financial Analyst for Capital Hill Day Services. Jide walked attendees through a successful system check and balance for billing by running ISP data reports and attendance reports to support billable services. While there are many approaches to preventing under and/or over billing, Jide did a great job highlighting his agency’s approach to preventing recoupment, over-billing, and under-billing.
I hope everyone enjoys this video as much as I. If you are interesting in using the excel template within the recording, please feel free to email me directly (chelsea.newby@therapservices.net).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJVnvI_YMBg&feature=youtu.be
Enjoy!
New Release Notes Webinar
Good Morning,
We held a webinar on 5/15 to welcome all of your new Certified Trainers and to review the New Release notes published via Therapservices.net. If you haven’t had the opportunity to read through the notes, this webinar will provide a great overview of the many updates contained within the 2015.0 release.
After viewing all the great updates we have planned, please access your BETA account to test out all the new features (They are AWESOME!). Here is an overview of BETA including instructions for access your BETA account via https://beta.therapservices.net :
Enjoy!
New Mexico Regional Conference
We just got back on Friday after getting to TRAIN at the Regional Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was great to see some returning faces from last year and to meet some new people as well. I feel like over all the conference was great and it added an avenue for fellow Therap Guru’s to brainstorm and trouble shoot. I feel like New Mexico is well on it’s way up in the Therap world. The state as a whole seems to be using Therap much more that what it is mandated for. There of course are some that have not caught on to all of it’s capabilities, but also many that have.
So, just wanted to touch base and say that […]
Hell Week= Surprise Week
Every year we hold an agency wide Therap training for our staff. This consists of six, roughly 12 hour, days of 1.5 hour class sessions. As you might expect by day three the instructors, myself and one other, are having nightmares about the sessions. We have been doing these trainings, whether its review or new material, for the last four years and have always had the staff logging on to Therap and following along. So, for the last three years we have had trainings where the staff stare at a computer screen while myself and the other instructor drone on and on. But not this year, this year we decided to shake things up a bit.
This year we decided not […]