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Demographics Fields Updates

As noted last month, our May enhancements will include global changes to the Race, Ethnicity, Primary Language, and Gender fields in AWARDS. The changes around Gender - which will allow for much more flexibility than exists today - will change how current Gender related data displays in AWARDS, so it is important for you and all AWARDS users at your agency to understand the upcoming changes. 

Here is what you can expect regarding existing AWARDS fields/options:

• Race - If not already configured as such in your database, this option will be modified to be a multi-select list, and to include a new "Declined to Specify" selection.
• Ethnicity - If not already configured as such in your database, this option will be modified to include a new "Declined to Specify" selection.
• Primary Language - If not already configured as such in your database, this option will be modified to include a new "Declined to Specify" selection.
• Gender - Will be relabeled as Sex at Birth. Existing data will be mapped to the appropriate new selection options. Upon deployment of the changes, this field will be hidden. An Optional Enhancement document will be available, allowing agencies to opt into having this field display after deployment.

Additionally, the following new fields/options will be added:

• Sexual Orientation - Upon deployment of the changes, this field will be hidden. An Optional Enhancement document will be available, allowing agencies to opt into having this field display after deployment.
• Gender Identity - Data will be mapped accordingly from the old Gender field. This option will replace the old Gender data variable in all AWARDS reports that pull in "Gender." It will be turned on globally for all upon deployment, and will be required. An Optional Enhancement document will be available allowing agencies to modify both the field label and selection list. 

Are you communicating client information in a way that's HIPAA-compliant?  If you're using email to send identifiable client data, the answer is most assuredly no.  Check out our tip of the month, below, for suggestions on how you can make sure you're communicating compliantly!

As we have done in previous months, we are continuing to make available a new set of useful features and functions to users of AWARDS. As always, this round of upgrades is provided free of charge to all AWARDS users and is described below. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask your local Help Desk or your Foothold Client Services representative. We hope these enhancements improve the way you use AWARDS and provide services! 

Deployment Date:  March 31, 2017

BillingBuilder - Billing Type Enhancement

As managed care continues to become more prevalent, there are scenarios in which a client's MCO Medicaid entitlement is used to pay for their participation in one program and their Medicaid entitlement is used to pay for their participation in a second program.  One challenge that this has presented in AWARDS is that a client with an active Medicaid entitlement and an active HMO Medicaid entitlement could have duplicate invoices generated for each payer.  To prevent this, AWARDS now allows you to specify which entitlement should be used for each program that the client is in.  

In order to utilize this feature, BillingBuilder customers will need to take the following steps:

1. Ask the Help Desk or your SPM to activate the feature which will add Billing Types field to the Insurance/Subsidized Payments Information section of the Certified Entitlements Page, and the Require Entitlement Billing Type field to the Edit Billing Type page in BillingBuilder.  
2. Check the Require Entitlement Billing Type option on the Edit Billing Type page for any billing type for which this distinction is required.  Once this option is selected for a particular payer and billing type, invoices will generate only for those clients who have the billing type selected in their entitlement for the payer as described below.
3. When entering or editing a client's insurance entitlement, use the Billing Type field to specify which billing types the entitlement should be used for.

BillingBuilder - BIP Codes for NYS CR Programs

New functionality is available to support BIP Billing for NYS CR program. CR programs can now track BIP eligible clients and generate BIP invoices in the BillingBuilder. In order to utilize the BIP billing enhancements CR programs will need to do the following:

• Congregate CR programs will need to assign a CR-BIP Congregate entitlement to all BIP eligible clients in the Insurance/Subsidized Payments section of the Certified Entitlements screen.
• Apartment CR programs will need to assign a CR-BIP Apartment entitlement to all BIP eligible clients in the Insurance/Subsidized Payments section of the Certified Entitlements screen. 

Please contact the Help Desk to have one or both of the new entitlements added to your database.

• If you are a BillingBuilder client, enter billing rates for the three new Congregate BIP and/or Apartment BIP rate codes.  This is can be done using BillingBuilder > Billing Rates, where you will select the Medicaid payer and the CR program, and then click CONTINUE.  The new rate codes are available for selection in the Billing Code drop-down. Those billing codes and the corresponding procedure codes are as follows:

Congregate CR            Apartment CR
FM-BIP-C (4500)             FM-BIP-A (4501)
H1-BIP-C (4502)             H1-BIP-A (4503)
H2-BIP-C (4504)             H2-BIP-A (4505)

Additionally, the Medicaid Services Report (MSR) will also flag clients eligible for BIP billing in a given calendar month.  When this report is run, BIP client are identified by the label "(BIP)," which will appear after their name.  This label will display in the report for all months for which the last date of the month falls within the date range of the corresponding BIP entitlement.  

BillingBuilder - Rendering / Attending Provider Secondary ID - 837

To address new 837 billing requirements, we have included new data entry fields on the following AWARDS screens:

• Staff Information > Credentials Tab - Rendering/Attending Provider Secondary ID & 837 ID Qualifier
• Billing Procedure Setup screen - Incident To Secondary ID & 837 ID Qualifier
• Program Billing Info screen - Secondary ID & 837 ID Qualifier

These new data entry fields will ensure that the proper secondary ID assigned to the rendering/attending provider and qualifier are reported in the 837 file if required by your payers.

HMIS Data Quality Report

A new HMIS Data Quality Report is now available in the Fiscal/Program menu. This report can be run for any program, but it's specifically designed for HMIS programs.  It can be also be run for groups of programs. The report starts with a "Validation" table that shows the number of people served in various categories. Then the report looks at data quality in six areas: 

1. Personally Identifiable Information - Looking at the completeness and validity of Name, SSN, DOB, Race, Ethnicity, and Gender.
2. Universal Data Elements - Looking at the completeness and validity of Veteran Status, Admission Date, Relationship to Head of Household, Client Location, and Disabling Condition.
3. Income and Housing Data Quality - Looking at the completeness and validity of Destination as well as Income at Entry, Annual Assessment, and Exit.
4. Chronic Homelessness - Looking at all of the data elements used to determine someone's Chronic Homeless status.
5. Timeliness - Looking at the gap between when the admission and discharge dates compared to the date of actual data entry.
6. Inactive Records - Looking at how many active Outreach records have had no contacts within 90 days.  Note: This measure also looks at Nightly Emergency Shelter programs, but our auto-discharge functionality prevents there from being inactive records.

Did you know... email is not secure and should never be used to transmit client names or other identifying information?  Doing so is a violation of HIPAA regulations. In the event that it is necessary to send client information to someone via email - whether it's to Foothold Technology staff for the purposes of troubleshooting or other assistance with your AWARDS database, or to other staff within your agency or program - that information (including any screenshots or attachments) must be de-identified, for example by limiting names to a few letters or referencing clients by AWARDS ID.  Alternately, instead of email it's a great idea to get in the habit of transmitting client identifying information via AWARDS messages, which are completely secure and 100% HIPAA-compliant!

Check out the latest in Foothold news and recent entries from the Foothold blog!