NJAMHAA News Spring 2021

spring 2021 17 to Meet Members’ Needs Winter In 2002, June Noto, currently Vice President of IT, Human Resources and Administrative Services, joined the team to serve as the IT Project Director and Gordon was promoted to Associate Director. “We are humbled that the Division of Mental Health and Addiction Services [DMHAS] kept us in this contract since the 1980s and continues to reach out to us for new initiatives. It is a testament to our ability to perform on a contract and to performwell,” Noto said. The IT Project has highly qualified technical support professionals who can address a broad range of technology needs, whether as an additional pair of hands for a large rollout (for example, of electronic health record systems) or as agencies’ own in-house representatives. Agencies can purchase blocks of time that they may use for any of the IT Project services. See the full list of services on page 27. “NJAMHAA and our members are fortunate to have consistent leadership of the IT Project. It provides stability and allows for growth,” Dr. Wentz said. One significant area of growth in the IT Project’s highly valuable services is the creation of practice groups and committees. The Billing Supervisors Practice Group “is where everyone goes to find answers about fee-for-service reimbursement; billing health maintenance organizations [HMOs] for services delivered to special populations; and, when Medicare Part D came out, how to help people get benefits and how to bill for Risperdal® injections,” according to Michelle Rowe, Director of the Billing Department at South Jersey Behavioral Health Resources, who has been involved with the group since it was created more than 24 years ago and has been the Chair for several years. “The group is very helpful. We started out small with little problems and then, many changes occurred, especially over the past couple of years,” she said. In addition to participating in quarterly meetings, the Billing Supervisors Practice Group members communicate daily through a GroupSite that the IT Project created for them. “Questions that are asked at meetings cannot always be answered at the moment. At times, there are 10 to 20 posts in one day. Different people answer one question, and we look up resources to help others,” Rowe said. When the HMOs started covering more services for special populations, providers initially were not receiving payments. Because NJAMHAA had the foresight to develop relationships with HMOs 10 years ago through the creation of the HMO Council, finding solutions was facilitated. Noto and Gordon invited representatives from the HMOs to meet with the Billing Practice Group to resolve this and other issues. “No single agency would be able to get a timely response as we did through NJAMHAA,” Rowe said. An earlier significant accomplishment was enabling providers to bill for crisis services that staff with credentials other than LCSWdelivered. The Billing Practice Group’s advocacy led to the Department of Banking and Insurance requiring insurers to pay for these services. “This was a big deal and one of the things I’mmost proud of,” Rowe said. This accomplishment meant a significant amount of revenue for what was then Steininger Behavioral Care Services, where Rowe worked in crisis services at the time. The agency was relatively small back then and has since merged with Oaks Integrated Care. The IT Project also facilitates the Compliance and Performance Improvement Committee, which is chaired by Karen Acker, Administrative Director at West Bergen Mental Healthcare. “This group is so beneficial in upholding quality and compliance within our provider agencies, and it continues to grow in membership. The information presented at meetings– from quality chart review ideas, compliance training, state audits, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act [HIPAA] concerns and so much more – is so vital,” she said. Another group is the IT Professional Advisory Committee (PAC), which Gilroy explained as being twofold. “We help agencies with computer, networking and security challenges, and we provide a forum to address data challenges directly with DMHAS,” she said. “We advocated for a new QCMR and USTF portal system. The QCMR one is operational and the other is under construction. We also met with DMHAS to set up QCMR training to ensure consistency in capturing and interpreting data, and this is in process,” added Gilroy, who has participated on the group since it was created around 2010 and has been the Chair since 2014. “What agencies share is the most important part of the IT PAC. For example, one had an audit and learned that discharge dates were incorrect because of a misinterpretation or a policy change. Learning this helped all of us,” Gilroy said. “Over time, we’ve focused less on hardware and software, and more on data and managing it,” she added. The IT Project’s newest practice group is for human resources professionals. This group had conducted a salary survey and hosted experts on employee benefit programs, changes in federal and state employment laws, and considerations for employers’ regarding COVID-19 vaccinations. [continued on page 18]