We hope you find this an efficient, useful tool and we welcome your feedback and comments. –Elizabeth Swain, CEO
If your health center has a training or technical assistance that you'd like to share with others around the state, or would like to subscribe others at your health center to Your CHCANYS please email the pertinent information to Libby Post at lpost@commservices.net. Thank you.
Breaking News HEAL NY Phase 19 - Health Care Efficiency and Affordability Law for New Yorkers (HEAL NY) Capital Grant Program PHL Section 2818 (2) announcement is out. The New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) Health Care Efficiency and Affordability Law for New Yorkers (HEAL NY) Capital Grant Program PHL Section 2818 (2) will provide grants to support and fund capital projects which will address conditions as cited in PHL Section 2818 (2) including facilities in financial distress and addressing unmet health care needs in New York State as determined by the Commissioner. Continuous recruitment will take place under the Health Care Efficiency and Affordability Law for New Yorkers Capital Grant Program (HEAL NY). A grant application can be found on the NYS Department of Health website by clicking here.
News from Health Center Support Economic Impact Analysis and Market and Workforce Assessment is due today. CHCANYS wants to provide you with the information and tools you need to strengthen your New Access Point (NAP) or Expansion Grant applications for federal support in your communities. These reports can be used to demonstrate the impact applicants have on their communities and will help to enable applicants to attract crucial state and local resources. Please complete and return the EIA/MWA survey form to Capital Link today. The form can be accessed by clicking here.
Two Speakers Confirmed for Clinical Forum & Statewide Conference Paul Grundy, MD, MPH, FACOEM, FACPM and IBM Corporation’s Global Director, IBM Healthcare Transformation will be the keynote speaker at the opening plenary session on Monday morning of CHCANYS Clinical Forum & Statewide Conference. For Dr. Grundy’s bio, please clickhere.
James R. Knickman, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of the New York State Health Foundation (NYSHealth, is confirmed to speak at Tuesday morning’s plenary session. For Dr. Knickman’s bio, please click here.
Register Today! This year’s conference will focus on health care reform and provide important content related to capital development, health care home and timely news and practices in health care policy, clinical quality, reimbursement, health information technology, and more. The conference will take place October 3-5 at The Desmond Hotel in Albany, NY. For the schedule, please click here.
For registration and hotel (hurry best rates guaranteed through September 1st) please click here.
NOMINATE TODAY! Make This Year’s CHCANYS Award Ceremony The Best Ever
CHCANYS’ Award Luncheon on Monday, October 4th is a great opportunity to recognize our best and brightest in the Health Center Movement. Please take a moment to nominate a health center supporter, employees or board members. To nominate someone, please click here.
APPLY TODAY! Jeffrey T. Latman Foundation Grant: Finance Scholarships
CHCANYS received a Jeffrey T. Latman Foundation grant to support technical assistance training and financial webinars for community health center finance and accounting staff. The grant also provides a limited number of scholarships for CHCANYS’ Clinical Forum and Statewide Annual Conference October 3-5 in Albany, NY. To apply for a scholarship, please click here.
CHCANYS Receives NYS Health Foundation Grant CHCANYS has just received a $400,000 grant from the NYS Health Foundation to provide intensive technical assistance and support to 10 to 13 New Access Point applicants in Western New York, Central New York, The Finger Lakes/Rochester area and Long Island—regions that CHCANYS has identified as historically underfunded and/or medically underserved within New York State. The applicants must be existing FQHCs, Look-Alikes, and new applicants seeking NAP funding. NYSHealth funding will support data collection and analysis, health care and business plan vetting, grant writing, and project management.
Project Manager Suzanne Rossel will work with CHCANYS staff and applicants to identify needs for assistance and provide technical support. Suzanne is a New York-based, national consultant with a wealth of expertise on FQHCs and the Section 330 application process. Our other partners in the effort include the Center for Health Workforce Studies, Capital Link, a group of clinical leaders and McGladrey. In addition, Dr. Kameron Wells, CHCANYS’ new Vice President for Quality Initiatives will be taking a leadership role in the project.
For questions about this important project, please contact Elizabeth Swain at 212-710-3802.
Patient Centered Medical Home: Opportunities and Challenges September 30, 2010, 9 AM - 3:30 PM, EmblemHealth, 55 Water Street, New York City This one-day symposium will provide practical information on implementing a medical home and include national and state perspectives and examples of successful medical home models. Speakers to include:
Richard J. Baron, MD, MACP, Internist, Greenhouse Internists, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Shari Erickson, Senior Associate, Center for Practice Improvement & Innovation, American College of Physicians
Philip Magistro, Deputy Director, Program Implementation, State Government HIT Coordinator, Pennsylvania Governor’s Office of Health Care Reform (GOHCR)
Meredith Rosenthal, PhD. Associate Professor of Health Economics and Policy, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health
Learn from successful medical home models and use these lessons learned to successfully implement medical home models in New York.
Identify leadership to continue to the discussion, coordinate efforts, identify barriers and develop solutions and create more synergy overall to support the various medical home efforts underway in New York
Key Topics include:
Development and implementation of PCMH poses many challenges;
Success will require effective policies in payment reform, certification of medical homes, facilitating transformation of existing practices including information technology adoption and use, and establishing appropriate linkages to the rest of the delivery system.
Need to have active facilitation in moving concept forward (learning collaboratives) Practices need guidance to transform themselves, need resources, connections with others
Learning collaboratives for practices to share best practices, communicate insights and learn quality improvement techniques
Focus on comprehensive, coordinated care for patients with chronic illness
Afternoon Roundtable Discussion Purpose: To get national, state, physician and payor perspectives on each of the following issues related to implementing a medical home model. Each speaker will be asked to address the barriers, obstacles and solutions to each of the discussion issues raised. Get input from the audience as well.
NACHC to Offer Training on the UDS Mapper Training for the UDS Mapper will be available at the NACHC Community Health Institute in Dallas September 12-14. Topics include the history of the UDS Mapper and the functionality of the tool as well as one-on-one training sessions that highlight functionality and how to use the mapper. For details on the schedule of trainings and how to sign up, please click here.
NACHC Issues New Health Center Briefs As part of its Turning Vision into Reality series, the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC), , has released two new briefs demonstrating how health centers stand ready to help implement the Affordable Care Act.
Brief #1: More Patients Gain Access to Health Center Care Thanks to Stimulus Funds, describes how health centers have effectively used stimulus funds to rapidly expand access to care and generate economic benefits for low-income communities. The brief includes state by state breakdown of ARRA economic impact.
Brief #2: Community Health Centers Lead a Primary Care Revolution, prepared in partnership with Capital Link, describes how health centers will continue to anchor needed and effective primary care in communities where it is needed most. This brief finds that health centers currently generate $20 billion in returns to their local communities. This brief includes a state by state breakdown of overall FQHC economic impact in their communities.
HRSA Issues Service Area Competition Funding Guidances Service Area Competition (SAC) funding guidances for health center project periods starting November 1, 2010 through June 1, 2011 (HRSA 11-007 - HRSA 11-014) are now available. Due dates begin October 25, 2010 for the initial group and end January 10, 2011 for the final group. Please be sure to use the correct funding guidance for your project period start dates. To download guidances, please click here. HRSA will extend project periods for those centers with project period start dates occurring in November, December, January and February. HRSA is committed to ensuring that existing grantees maintain continuity of services and will be providing pro-rated funding to these organizations as appropriate.
Two New Tutorials Available from KaiserEDU.org on New Health Reform Law Health Reform: How Will Medicaid Change?, a narrated slide tutorial, reviews the basics of the Medicaid program and explains the program’s coverage goals under the new health reform law. It covers the expansion of the Medicaid program, new eligibility criteria, enhanced federal funding for newly eligible individuals as well as provisions in the new law regarding Medicaid benefits, payments, dual eligibles and long-term care. To access this tutorial, please click here.
Health Reform: A Retrospective provides a step-by-step review of how the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act became law, who the key players and Congressional committees are and how the law came to fruition from the President’s budget proposal through the signing of the bill into law. To access this tutorial, please click here.
Additional Tutorials on Health Reform Available from KaiserEDU.org
Health Reform and Medicare: Overview of Key Provisions Please click here.
Summary of New Health Reform Law Please click here. Summary of Coverage Provisions in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Please click here.
News from Clinical Quality Initiatives
Dr. Kameron Wells Joins CHCANYS Staff We are pleased to announce that Kameron L. Wells, ND, RN is the new Vice President for Clinical Initiatives at CHCANYS. With more than 25 years as a healthcare professional, Dr. Wells brings a wealth of knowledge, experience, and credentials to this position. Dr. Wells will be responsible for overseeing all current clinical improvement projects of CHCANYS as well as identifying and developing new opportunities for CHCANYS and health centers statewide to increase access to primary health care for millions more New Yorkers who are uninsured or underinsured. To read the full announcement of his appointment, please click here.
Enroll Now in the Adult Hepatitis Vaccination Program The New York State Department of Health, Bureau of Immunization would like to invite New York State Community Health Centers to enroll in the Adult Hepatitis Vaccination Program (AHVP). In 2006 the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommended that hepatitis B vaccination be offered to all adults seen in settings where a high proportion of those served are at increased risk, as part of routine prevention. CDC launched a national initiative encouraging states to use existing federal funds to purchase adult hepatitis B vaccine. With the use of federal and state funding under the AHVP participating health care providers receive single antigen hepatitis A and hepatitis B vaccines or a combination hepatitis A and B vaccine at no cost. This program’s target population is individuals over the age of 18 years without health insurance coverage for these vaccines. Please contact Geraldine Naumiec at (518) 474-3347 or email immunize@health.state.ny.us for an application and additional information.
News from Emergency Preparedness Upstate The NYSDOH Health Commerce System (HCS) comprising the HPN and HIN has been redesigned as the Health Commerce System portal, or HCS and has been available for your review and use since March 1, 2010.
Beginning September 7, 2010, when you log into the NYSDOH Health Commerce System (HCS), the HPN and HIN sites will no longer be available as options from the Classics menu of the HCS portal. All Health Commerce activities associated with the HPN and HIN sites will be accessible through the HCS portal.
Please visit https://commerce.health.state.ny.us/hpn/training/ for important information about new HCS features and upcoming portal training opportunities. You may also sign up in advance for live webinar training sessions at: http://nyvbcc.webex.com/meet/cti. Self-paced training modules are available as well on the HCS portal by navigating to Topics -> Training -> SPL: Watch me first! an HCS portal orientation.
News from HIT SAVE THE DATE: September 30 – October 1 Meaningful Use of Electronic Health Records, Beth Israel Medical Center, NYC Sponsored by HRSA’s Office of Health Information Technology and Quality and the Institute for Family Health, this two-day, vendor-neutral workshop will have expert staff from the Institute for Family Health, their New York colleagues and other HIT leaders providing perspectives, strategies and real-world examples of the meaningful use of EHR in community health center settings. This workshop is open to HRSA-funded grantees who have, or will soon, implement electronic health records. For additional information, click here or contact Diane Hauser dhauser@institute2000.org.
You are invited to a Summit meeting with the New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC) Regional Extension Center Summits will be held between September 15 and 30th at 7 different locations in the upstate region offering an opportunity to become familiar with the Regional Extension Center’s (REC’s) program of technical assistance to support primary care providers in implementing EHRs and achieving Meaningful Use. .
As a newly designated Extension Agent of the NYeC Regional Extension Center, CHCANYS has begun outreach to discuss the benefits of membership in the NYeC REC, including the assistance we can offer. It is our plan to be in touch with all of you by early September. If you have not yet heard from us and you would like to talk now, please feel free to contact either Lisa Perry, Vice President, Health IT: lperry@chcanys.org (212-710-3815) or Sandy Worden, Project Manager, Health Center Network of NY: sworden@chcanys.org (347-558-8399.)
For details and schedules about the September summits, please click here.
News From HCNNY Network growth – Oak Orchard has become a full network member. Anthony Jordan and RPCN were named in the new grant application and should become full members soon.
Staffing – We are currently recruiting for a full time Admin Asst and Project Manager and will soon recruit a Clinical Quality Coordinator and an additional full time trainer.
Implementation work – We recently completed eCW implementation services for Tri-County Family Medicine on a fee for service basis. Currently, we are managing the implementation of Hometown Health Center who went live on eCW EHR August 23rd. Ron Hunt joined Judy and Sandy to provide go-live support. Hometown expects to be connected to the HIXNY RHIO by the end of September, initially exchanging key clinical information and then lab orders/results. We are about to launch an implementation project relating to electronic patient communication tools and will most likely begin with the western NY members.
Other activities – We co-facilitated an information session for CHC’s in the Rochester RHIO service area in late July to help centers understand the RHIO’s strategic plans, services and timelines. A strategic planning retreat will be held in late September at which network leaders will review and consider federal and state initiatives while finalizing network goals, priorities and activities for the next few years.
Training – We are holding a BridgeIT reporting training session on Sunday morning, 10/3, prior to the start of our conference. All six of our eCW network members use BridgeIT for standard reporting and ad-hoc data queries of their eCW database. For this session, we have invited other NY FQHC BridgeIT customers to attend (Finger Lakes, Urban, PPNYC, Refuah).
Regional Extension Center (REC) program -- Northern Oswego County Health (NOCHSI) and Rochester Primary Care Network (RPCN) are very close to contract finalization for REC services through CHCANYS. Hometown will enroll soon, and we expect that United Cerebral Palsy (UCPNC) will enroll in September also. We’re anxious to bring on an additional trainer to manage the demand for services. Lisa, Sandy, Judy, Ron and Peter C. have a two-day planning meeting scheduled in late September to formalize service delivery plans and tools.
News from Management & Finance HRSA’S New Bureau of Primary Health Care Help Line Now Available The Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) Bureau of Primary Health Care (BPHC) is pleased to announce the launch of a new BPHC Help Line to provide assistance to BPHC grantees and stakeholders. The BPHC Help Line can be accessed by calling 1-877-974-BPHC (2742) or emailing bphchelpline@hrsa.gov.
The toll-free number and email are available to provide grantees and stakeholders with information and assistance in the following areas:
BHCMIS – System in EHB (Electronic Handbook)
Health Center Quarterly Reporting (HCQR)/ARRA 1512
Reporting Uniform Data System (UDS)
Federal Torts Claims Act (FTCA) for Health Centers and Free Clinics
The goal of the new, toll-free number and email is to provide a single point of contact for grantees and stakeholders with respect to the topics mentioned above. The new BPHC Help Line consolidates and replaces the previous system help numbers and the FTCA help line. The BPHC Help Line is available Monday to Friday (excluding Federal holidays), from 8:30 AM – 5:30 PM (ET), with extra hours available during high volume periods.
Grantees are encouraged to contact the HRSA Call Center for EHB related issues such as account access, and password resetting at: 1-877-464-4772 or callcenter@hrsa.gov.
CMS Reminds of Medical Records Retention Policies The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has reissued its policies on medical records retention. The MedLearn Matters article provides guidance for physicians, suppliers, and providers on record retention timeframes. The information is not new, however CMS encourages providers to review the information in this article and ensure that you are in compliance. Please note that these are CMS requirements only and state requirements may differ.
CMS Information on ICD-10 The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has created a website on ICD-10 to help all become familiar with the changes that are coming. The transition to ICD-10 and to CMS Version 5010 will require system and business changes throughout the health care industry. ICD-10 will affect coding for everyone covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), not just those who submit Medicare claims. The website content is updated periodically.
CHCANYS Community HealthCorps Update
We have successfully completed our 2009 -2010 Community HealthCorps Program. Upstate HealthCorps members Jasmine Blackwell of Whitney M. Young Jr. Health Clinic and Felipe Amaya of Greater Hudson Valley Family Health Center were recently hired as employees by their respective sites. Samuel Porter of Hudson Headwaters is continuing his educational pursuits. He has recently started a Post Baccalaureate program for Medicine at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. We would also like to congratulate our other members Kayon Forrest (who served for two years in our New York City and Upstate Program), Robert Powe, Shelly Carter, and Ashley Suchomel for their hard work and year of service. We are proud of our members service and accomplishments and are elated that our program continues to not only operate and function as a critical component in Health Center Work Force development, but also train, mentor, and develop tomorrow’s future health care workers and leaders.
We have successfully recruited and retained 23 of our 24 slots for this years upcoming CHCANYS Community HealthCorps Program
Our new CHCANYS HealthCorps class of 2010-2011 year officially begins Sunday September 5, 2010. We will be conducting a 6 day Pre service Orientation training for our HealthCorps Members. Members will first travel to Camp Ramapo for a three day team building and personal development training, and will complete the remainder of the week training at the CHCANYS New York City office. We look forward to having a wonderful and productive year and we ask for your help and assistance in welcoming them into our program.
AmeriCorps Program Manager Sajjadur Rahman has been promoted to Director of Programs. Under his leadership and guidance the program has doubled its membership and expanded its geographic scope becoming a state-wide AmeriCorps program. We would like to recognize his accomplishments and wish Mr. Rahman the best of luck in his new role and in his future endeavors.
CHCANYS own Orlando Reboredo has been promoted to the role of AmeriCorps Program Coordinator. We wish Mr. Reboredo much success in his new position.
