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How lucky are we to welcome not one, but two new MnCHOICES team
members? First, we want to introduce you to Raukiya Smith-Binns, who filled a new position. She will work
closely with managed care organizations (MCOs) as they prepare to transition to
MnCHOICES. Although we are not planning to launch MCOs before 2018, it is
exciting to have her here and helps us remember the future is coming! Most
recently, she worked in the community in management positions with The Cooperating
Community Programs and Dependable Home Health Care.
Second, we were thrilled to bring Jill Schweisthal to DHS from Sherburne County. She will be a policy
lead for MnCHOICES. Her years of experience at Sherburne, where she supervised
the implementation of MnCHOICES and provided ongoing oversight, along with her
knowledge about waivers, Rule 185 and PCA, are a real gift for both DHS as well
as lead agencies.
A big high five to all of you who accepted the Inactive User
Challenge. We have seen a tremendous
amount of progress to correct and update the security access
and user roles for staff who access the MnCHOICES assessment through SSIS. Keep
up the great effort. You will receive an updated
report around mid-September. In the future,
we will provide quarterly reports.
We received a fabulous response to the information requested
in the recent MnCHOICES Support Plan survey. We encourage the few lead agencies
still working on the survey to return it as soon as possible.
We are busy analyzing
the data to help prepare for the
launch of the support plan. In addition, we are contacting all the contracted
agencies you listed to gather the number of potential support plan users they
will have.
The MnCHOICES Mentors Alliance (MMA) met in August. The MMA Charter calls for an annual review, which
we did at the August meeting. In addition, we solicited written feedback from mentors. We are documenting the
comments and suggestions we received. We will review the feedback and bring it to the next MMA meeting with some recommendations
to discuss for the future of the MMA.
The next MMA meeting will
be Nov. 8, which is Election
Day. Watch for updates; we may change
the meeting time or consider a webinar instead of a face-to-face meeting.
We plan to include photos
of MnCHOICES users in the online
MnCHOICES Support Plan (MnSP) training modules. We took photos at the recent mentors alliance meeting, but we
still need more. We will use the photos in the Check Your Knowledge section of
each module, which informs learners whether their answers are right or wrong. We
will identify those in the photos by first name and the agency they represent.
If you want
to be part of the MnCHOICES Support Plan (MnSP) training – and we hope you do –
send us photos of:
- You
- You and your favorite colleague, or
- A group photo.
Take two
photos. One photo should reflect how
excited you are when a learner gets the answer right. The other should show
how sad you are for them when they
don’t.
If possible:
- Use a white or plain background
- Take the photo full length – we will crop and typically use from the waist up
- Be creative and have fun.
We plan to continue
to take photos whenever we are out at meetings with you. Or, if we don’t
see you soon, just take and send your
own JPEGs or PNGs to: andrew.m.gribble@state.mn.us.
To legally use your photo, we need you to sign and return a release too.
 Amanda and Kelsey show us their happy and sad faces
In our work, we use many dates. Each of them is equally
important, but not always equal in value. One example: dates used in screening
documents and service agreements:
The DD Screening Document has three locations for dates:
- Date Submitted – the date the screening is entered into MMIS
- Referral Date – the date the person first requested services or was referred to the county for DD screening. See the DD Screening Document Codebook for more information about scenarios when this date may change
- Action Date – the date that the action in Field 24, “Action Type” is effective. (Example: A full team screening would have the action date of the day the screening occurred.)
The LTC Screening Document has two locations for dates:
- Action Type Date – the date that the face-to-face assessment occurred
- Effective Date – the date the new, or next, service agreement or waiver span starts
- The dates on the Type B Service Agreement, for PCA services, is the first date of the service agreement span.
Never clear isolated storage until you first verify that all your assessments are online and all your
recently added data is still there.
The Long-Term Services and Supports Assessment and Program
Information and Signature Sheet – DHS-2727
– and the instructions to complete it (DHS-2727A)
are revised and ready for you to access in eDocs. Certified assessors and case
managers use the DHS-2727 at every long-term services and supports (LTSS)
assessment and reassessment to inform people about their rights and
responsibilities in the assessment and support-planning process. The form contains
information talked about, during the interview, regarding LTSS programs and
resources. The person and their legal representative, if they have one, sign
the form.
People have been asking what a toggle is. According to Merriam-Webster’s
Dictionary, it’s computer language for switching between two options by
pressing a single key. Truth be told, it’s nothing that mentors or users need
to worry about. A toggle is something
done by our fantastic help desk
staff when users are in a predicament. Most often, the help desk uses a toggle because
assessors can’t zero out all the questions or they have duplicate answers. Most
times, when the help desk performs the “toggle,” it resolves the issue and the
user can complete his or her work.
The MnCHOICES Community Support Plan Worksheet (DHS-6791A)
is available for order. The DHS-6791A is the carbonless form used by certified
assessors at each MnCHOICES assessment. Assessors must use the worksheet to
remind people about the important information that was discussed during the
assessment.
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