WMHS, in collaboration with the Title X grantees from North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming will be hosting 4 webinars in July and August on ICD-10 and family planning. These webinars will be available to all Title X staff in Montana free of charge. Here are the details:

 

Webinar Dates and Content

Webinar 1 - July 6 from 12 - 1 pm  - "The Revenue Cycle"

Webinar 2 - July 20 from 12 - 1 pm - "CPT coding and compliance"

Webinar 3 - August 3  from 12 - 1 pm - "Diagnosis coding and ICD-9"

Webinar 4 - August 24 from 12 - 1 pm - "Diagnosis coding and ICD-10"

 

Webinars will include case studies. For webinar #2, a coding and compliance handout will be provided. In Webinar #4, an ICD-10 Forward Map (Cross-walk from ICD-9 - ICD-10) will be provided.

 

Webinar Recording

Trainings will be recorded for staff who are unable to attend.

 

Capacity

The capacity for the web-based system will be approximately 100-125. The webinars will be recorded for those who cannot attend on the days offered. It is absolutely ok for staff to share logins so that multiple staff can view the webinars on one computer. Login information will be sent out as the dates approach.

 

If you have questions please contact A.C. Rothenbuecher at 444.3775 or arothenbuecher@mt.gov. 

As the 50 year anniversary of Medicare and Medicaid approaches, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is looking for stories about how these programs have changed the lives of Americans across the nation. One of our goals for the anniversary is to illustrate the faces of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. As you know, personal stories play an important role in bringing public policy to life. They show how our health care programs change the lives of real families and impact communities across the country.

 

In the coming months, we plan to share beneficiary stories in a number of ways. Stories will be used to help bring life to speeches and content on our websites. Some beneficiaries will be invited to share their stories at events or be interviewed for videos. In addition, as part of our effort to celebrate the 50th Anniversary, CMS is building an gallery exhibit that tells the stories of 50 beneficiaries - one story from each state. The exhibit, existing of photos and stories, will be displayed at the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C.

 

We are reaching out to you today to request your help in collecting the stories of beneficiaries in your community. For the past 50 years, Medicare and Medicaid have been protecting the health and well-being of millions of families, changing their lives, and improving America's economic security. The story of Medicare and Medicaid's success starts at the local level, and we want to make sure your community is included.

  

Attached please find additional information about how a beneficiary can submit a story to CMS and a Model Release Form which should accompany each beneficiary submission. 

 

The Management and Systems Improvement (MSI) National Training Center, funded by OPA, recently launched a new HIT community of practice (COP). You can get your HIT questions answered by HIT experts and participate in knowledge-sharing with your peers in this COP. 

  

MSI is also hosting a HIT-Byte webinar on June 16, 1 pm ET. This webinar will discuss Electronic Practice Management systems. You can register now.

  

You can also check out this COP for HIT tools including: 

• HIT calculator-A return on investment calculator that tells you whether it's worth it to adopt or upgrade your electronic health record (EHR) system.
• Certified EHR-A checklist to see how to make sure your system is FPAR 2.0 ready.
• Online Nursing Informatics-A virtual course starting in July on how to build your nursing informatics skills.

 

The transition to ICD-10 is still on track to take place October 1, 2015. Starting in this week's edition of Reproductive Health Watch, NFPRHA will highlight tools to help streamline the transition to ICD-10. Have an ICD-10 tool that you want to see? Let NFPRHA know by e-mailing Amanda Kelinson at akelinson@nfprha.org and including "ICD-10 Tool" in the e-mail subject line.

 

NFPRHA's 2015 National Conference featured content on transitioning to ICD-10, which included a crosswalk of the common ICD codes used by family planning providers. This handout (PDF) is now available on the NFPRHA website. Although crosswalks are a useful tool, they should not be considered a replacement for understanding ICD-10 code selection. Health care providers should strongly consider getting an ICD-10 codebook, which provides clarity to the intricacies of these new codes. 

• Flexible, quality schooling to help young parents complete high school or obtain their GED (including flexible schedules and classes, mentoring, and educational advocacy/mentoring)
• Case management and family support services
• Referral and linkages to prenatal care and reproductive health services
• Quality child care with links to basic preventive health care
• Nurturing parenting and life skills education and support services
• Father involvement and support services.

• Establishing RFPs and procurement and monitoring sub-grantee performance and compliance with grant requirements;
• Establishing a stakeholder network of sub-grantees to promote program objectives and providing technical assistance;
• Reporting on program results including budget and analysis of issues and barriers;
• Developing solutions related to the identification of issues and barriers and implementing those solutions ;
• Conducting quality assurance measurements on sub-grantees;
• Oversight of needs assessment and development of a strategic plan.

A major responsibility of this position is to synthesize diverse and sometimes conflicting information from multiple sources, make determinations about relevance and validity, assess options and alternatives and implement strategies and solutions. In addition, this position provides oversight of sub-grantees throughout the state and acts as a knowledgeable resource on program questions and answers and implementation.

 

 

 

There are no days off when it comes to teen pregnancy prevention-it's an ongoing conversation with youth and the community about healthy lifestyles and good decisions. So it's best to stay creative and open to new ideas.

 

In thisslideshow we look at some innovative ways to keep youth focused on healthy goals. It's all about reaching them effectively and meeting their needs as individuals.

 

Find these and other program strategies in the following NCFY articles:

"Q&A: Sheana Bull On Enhancing Teen Pregnancy Prevention With Text Messaging"

"Primary Sources: Monitoring, Measuring and Preventing Adolescent Pregnancy"

"Q&A: 'One Word Can Make a Difference' and Other Insights Into Addressing Teen Pregnancy in Latino Communities"

"Work to Be Done: As Teen Pregnancy Rates Decline, Georgia Youth Workers Broaden Focus"

"Bright Idea: In Florida, Youth Leadership and Teen Pregnancy Prevention Go Hand in Hand"

 

Young men who got someone pregnant had a lot of factors in common-not just one or two-in a study we recently wrote about. The cross-sectional study looked at a whopping 41 factors in young men's lives, including the number of people they'd had sex with, their age when they'd had sex for the first time, and the grade they'd reached in school.

 

Most studies focus on how individual factors affect the outcome of adolescent pregnancy, says lead author Dr. May Lau, a professor and pediatrician at the University of Texas Southwestern.

 

"They may not represent the whole picture," she explained. Her research team used a research method called recursive partitioning analysis, or RPA, to look at how strongly clusters of factors, rather than individual factors on their own, are associated with a young man's likelihood of getting someone pregnant.

 

"It is possible that an individual factor may not be associated with adolescent pregnancy [when studied on its own], but when looking at the factor in a cluster it is associated with adolescent pregnancy," Dr. Lau says.

 

One limitation of the study is that it doesn't tell us when the factors happened in relation to the pregnancy. So for example, boys reported whether they'd been tested for STDs at some point in their lives. The researchers could not tell if the young men had gotten their tests before or after they learned their partners were pregnant.

 

Still, this is one of few adolescent pregnancy prevention studies in which boys are the focus. Therefore, its findings are valuable for anyone in a position to help young men prevent pregnancy.

 

Most studies of adolescent pregnancy prevention focus on adolescent females; boys and young men have historically not been the focus of such studies, Dr. Lau says.

We talked to Dr. Lau to find out what she wants sexual health educators and other family and youth workers to take away from her research. Here are a few steps you can take, based on what Dr. Lau's team found:

1. Ask young men if they've gotten tested for HIV. Having ever been tested for HIV was associated with higher pregnancy rates (with the caveat that the researchers couldn't tell if the testing happened before or after the pregnancy). If you know a young man has been tested for HIV (or if you are helping him to get tested), be sure to talk to him about safe sex.
2. Make sure youth get sex education by 9^th grade. Regardless of whether their age matched their grade in school, boys who received their first sex education course at 10^th grade or higher were among those at highest risk for pregnancy involvement, representing 84 percent of the teen dads or pregnancy-involved young men. What this means is that all adolescent males who don't receive sexuality education until 10^th grade or later are at risk of adolescent pregnancy, not just those who drop out of, or are held back from, school.
3. Work to change young men's attitudes toward using condoms. Boys and young men with negative condom attitudes were less likely to use condoms, and had higher pregnancy prevalence. "No one really asks adolescent males why they don't use condoms," Dr. Lau says. "Sometimes they'll tell you, 'they don't work, they rip, I can't feel anything,'" she says. Health educators should not only inform youth about condoms, but also assess boys' condom attitudes, she says, because boys and young men "may have preconceived notions from peers, and even from other adults in their lives." She says one-on-one discussions may make young men feel more comfortable than group sessions.
4. Remember that any young man can be at risk of getting someone pregnant. "Talk to them earlier about safe sex," Dr. Lau recommends.

  

Tuesday, June 23, 2015