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Foothold EXPO
Impact Prize
FootholdConnect Events
MIPS, MACRA, and AWARDS
What's New in AWARDS
Tip of the Month - Bookmarking Online Help
Foothold News & Blog
We are thrilled to announce this year’s keynote speaker: David Simon, creator of the critically acclaimed HBO series The Wire. A Baltimore-based journalist, David Simon began his work as a crime reporter for The Baltimore Sun. While at the paper, he reported and wrote two works of narrative non-fiction, Homicide: A Year On The Killings Streets and The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood, the former an account of a year spent with the city homicide squad and the latter, a year spent on a West Baltimore drug corner.
Homicide became the basis for the NBC drama, which aired from 1993 to 1999, and, for which, Simon worked as a writer and producer following his time at The Sun in 1995. The Corner became an HBO miniseries and won three Emmy Awards in 2000. The Wire, a subsequent HBO drama, aired from 2002 to 2008 and depicted a dystrophic American city contending with fraudulent drug war, the loss of its industrial base, political and educational systems incapable of reform, and a media culture oblivious to all of the above.
To read more about David Simon and purchase your tickets to EXPO TEN, click here.
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Tell us about the most impactful, inspirational things you've accomplished using AWARDS. We'll reward the most innovative achievements with a cash prize and a trip to our 2017 Expo in New York City!
Join us on February 22 at 2PM ET and learn why the Impact Prize is important to Foothold Technology. We'll announce the new submission categories we've established this year, and several of our judges will share what they’ll look for in a winning application.
We will start accepting submissions March 1st. For more information on the Impact Prize, click here.
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For more information on upcoming FootholdConnect events, please go to the FootholdConnect button on the AWARDS Home screen, or visit the Upcoming Events page of the Foothold Technology web site.
And don't forget... If you've missed any recent FootholdConnect events, you can access the recordings for those in Online Help here!
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The Medicaid Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015, also known as MACRA, created a new Quality Payment Program focused on improving the quality of care provided. This program has two tracks that providers can choose: Advanced Alternate Payment Models (APMs) or the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS). Participating in an APM involves selecting an advanced payment model that gives practices the opportunity to earn a 5% incentive payment by taking on front-end risk. For AWARDS users the more popular track is likely to be MIPS, which involves submitting quality measure data to a national registry. MIPS is succeeding the previous quality reporting system, PQRS, and the Medicare version of the Meaningful Use incentive program. If you had a provider participating in either of these two programs, you may receive a notice about MIPS from CMS.
There are four options for participating in MIPS (remember this is for Medicare only) (from CMS):
Reporting for MIPS is based off of the eCQM (electronic clinical quality measure) reports that are a component of AWARDS for Meaningful Use. eCQMs are a defining feature of AWARDS for Meaningful Use because they require users to use nearly every feature in the workflow. However, MIPS requires more than just reporting; your agency must actively undertake quality improvement based on the eCQMs available in AWARDS and do the proper data entry to benefit. Put another way, implementing the Meaningful Use workflow at your agency is necessary, but not sufficient, to satisfy MIPS reporting. To learn more about using AWARDS for Meaningful Use, please visit the MU Center in AWARDS Online Help and contact your Client Services Team representative to get started.
The introduction of the MIPS program comes in a transition year for AWARDS. Foothold is currently working to certify AWARDS as a 2015 Edition CERHT which will provide comprehensive reporting options for MIPS through adoption of select eCQMs. The 2015 Edition certification was designed for programs like MIPS and AWARDS will operate to that spec. We expect that we will be able to make the 2015 Edition of AWARDS available to users in Q4 of 2017.
Presently, AWARDS is certified as a 2014 Edition which meets the requirements for the 2017 reporting period (for registries where the 2014 Edition is an allowed option). AWARDS has nine eCQMs which should allow participating providers to potentially reach the "Full" level of participating in MIPS, but participants must begin planning as soon as possible so that they can correctly align their expectations. Using the 2014 Edition of AWARDS for MIPS may be more difficult than it will be with the 2015 Edition, because it was not designed for MIPS. If you wait until the end of the 2017 reporting period you should have the expectation of reporting in the "Not participating" or "Test" levels. Our team is excited to work with you on MIPS and embark on the next phase of using a certified electronic health record.
Source: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (February 2017) Quality Payment Program - https://qpp.cms.gov/
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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: February 15, 2017
Federal Funding Sources - Enhancements
HMIS projects which receive federal funding are asked to keep track of all federal funding under Agency Program Information in AWARDS. Previously this page only allowed users to enter information about three grants. This section has now been redesigned to allow additional federal funding sources to be added. When adding a new program you will find space for one Federal Funding Source on the HMIS Settings tab. If additional funding sources need to be added users can click the Add Funding Source link to add extra rows. There is also a new toggle that lets you switch between viewing the "Complete History" or just "Current Sources." "Current Sources" will show only Federal Funding Sources that do not have a Grant End Date.
As part of these changes, the ReportBuilders which included Federal Funding Source data variables have been updated. On the HMIS ReportBuilder, HMIS History ReportBuilder, and HMIS Intake ReportBuilder, all of the funding source data variables have been replaced with a single Current Funding Sources option. This variable will report out a comma-delimited list of all the funding sources associated with a project. This new data variable is also available within the Create Program Groupings feature under System Setup > Agency Program Information.
Additionally, within the Agency Programs ReportBuilder a new option has been added to the initial report settings page to allow users to choose whether they want to include "one row per program" or "one row per funding source." When the report is run for one row per program, only the Current Funding Sources data variable will be available for use. When the report is run for one row per funding source, users can choose to report out on Funding Source, Grant Start Date, Grant End Date, and Grant ID.
We have attempted to modify all ReportBuilder saved report formats that used the old data variables so that they now use the new "Current Funding Sources" option; however, this change may not work in all situations. Please review any saved report formats to verify that they still work, and modify them as needed. Custom Program Groupings created in the Create Program Groupings feature should also be reviewed. Thank you!
New York State Care Management Reporting Tool (CMART) Version 3 - Now Available!
We are happy to announce that AWARDS has been updated to meet the data entry and reporting requirements for the newly released CMART Version 3. Different from previous iterations, CMART Version 3 requires three basic .TXT files – and as a result, uses a simpler process in AWARDS than the previous version. Specifically, users will no longer need to complete the CMART Quarterly form, or utilize the CMART Excel spreadsheet. Additionally, the Patient Tracking System (PTS) components of the previous workflow have been removed and replaced with a new process for the Medicaid Analytics Performance Portal (MAPP). For more details on MAPP, please reference the MAPP Health Home Tracking in AWARDS instruction sheet.
Key elements of CMART Version 3 data collection in AWARDS include documenting outreach attempts and core services provision, as well as Service Plans, FormBuilder forms, and saved ExportBuilder formats. For the reporting portion of the process, Foothold has developed system export files in AWARDS, though more likely than not users will need to modify these system exports to meet their exact field mapping needs and FormBuilder use. The CMART Version 3 Data Tracking & Reporting for NYS Health Homes instruction sheet details the steps for making these modifications, or building the export files from scratch, if desired.
As part of the CMART 3 work, agencies can opt to enable a new Target field on the Progress Note settings page, and may also need additional configuration to have Medicaid # available for selection on various ExportBuilders. Please reach out to your Client Services Division representative or the Foothold Help Desk for assistance with CMART 3 configuration in your database.
Procedures - New Format
The Medical > Procedures feature now has a new look as we continue to develop the new navigation and usability of AWARDS. Changes to the feature include:
Other updates to the design include improved navigation tools, such as clickable breadcrumbs at the top of the page, an action bar on data entry pages, and improved index pagination.
For more information on working with Procedure records, please click here.
Progress Note ID - New Display Options
A new option is now available within the Progress Notes feature, that displays the Progress Note ID in various places. Specifically, when this new option has been turned on behind-the-scenes in your database, additions will be seen in the following locations:
Progress Note IDs are generated by AWARDS at the time of note creation, and will still be available for all programs on the Progress Notes ReportBuilder and Service Contacts ReportBuilder. The additional locations described above can be turned on at the program type level. Please contact the Help Desk to request which program types you'd like to have this enhancement turned on for, as needed.
ReportBuilder Enhancements
As part of our ongoing efforts to make the ReportBuilders across AWARDS more comprehensive and user-friendly, we've made the following enhancements:
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Tip of the Month - Bookmarking Online Help
Did you know... you can bookmark AWARDS Online Help for easy access even when you’re not in AWARDS itself?
To create a bookmark that will take you to the main Online Help "welcome" page each time, navigate to https://demodb.footholdtechnology.com/help and use your browser to add a bookmark to that URL.
To create a bookmark that will take you directly to a specific page of Online Help that you refer to frequently, start by navigating to that portion of Online Help. Next, scroll down to the bottom of the page and copy the URL found there; for example:
Paste that URL into your browser, press <ENTER>, and then create your bookmark. (Note that the default name for the bookmark in these cases will be "AWARDS Online Help," so you may want to change that to something more specific to help you remember what it’s pointing to.)
Bonus Tip! The URL at the bottom of each Online Help page is also a handy way to direct colleagues to a specific section of Help if you'd like to share the information found there. It can be copied and pasted into an AWARDS Message or email, linked to a document, and more!
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Check out the latest in Foothold news and recent entries from the Foothold blog!
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