NJAMHAA IT PROJECT
Professional Advisory Committee
Meeting Minutes
March 23, 2015
Attendee List – Tina Cavalieri (Preferred Behavioral), Mark DePazza (NJAMHAA), Naomi Fox (Vantage), Teri Gilroy (Cape Counseling), Ron Gordon (NJAMHAA), Natalie Greene (Catholic Charities Trenton), Laura Kratz (Hunterdon Health), Bob Marasa (Qualifacts Systems), Mary Meehan-Cairns (Catholic Charities of Archdiocese of Newark), June Noto (NJAMHAA), Brian Regan (DHS Associate IT Director), Vincent Santoro (NewPoint Behavioral),Ann Schilling (Rescue Mission Trenton),
The meeting was called to order by June Noto, Director of the IT Project. She announced that the IT PAC Committee is in search of a new chairperson and looking for volunteers.
Minutes from the last meeting were presented and a motion to accept the minutes was made,seconded and approved.
A request for any additions to agenda was made. There were none.
The introductions and agenda were bypassed to givethe floor to Brian Regan, DHS Associate IT Director, from DMHAS to provide information on current Division activities, projects and issues. Brian elaborated on the Governor’s announcement ofa single point of contact for addiction treatment consumers and its effect on NJSAMS. This single access system is called the Interim Management Entity (IME). Tentative details were provided on two phases of the IME and its modules, tools and timelines. Brian continued to briefly discuss the ongoing testing of the BEDS platform and secure email. Brian also announced that maintenance releases would be out shortly for the following platforms: CIMS, QCMR and USTF.
Tina Cavalieri, who was supposed to be part of a beta test of the Dept. of Human Services secure email platform, noted that she did not receive an invitation to participate. Brian made a note that he would have this corrected as soon as possible. In the interim, her organization has implemented secure email through Office 365 and state staff have had issues with the encryption and have been unable to receive the emails. Providers know that they cannot send unencrypted ProtectedHealth Information(PHI) data via email, despite requests from some state staff to do so. Brian noted that all personnel within DMHAS have been notified that PHI will not be sent via email, unless it is via secure encrypted email. Therefore, the providers should no longer be receiving instructions from division staff to violate the HIPAA regulations.
Regarding the USTF, June Noto discussed ICD-10 and DSM-V with the group. Dr. Eilers who is the DMHAS Medical Director wants to collect ONLY ICD-10 codes for diagnosis. There are some definitional differences between a small number of codes within the ICD-10 and DSM-V codes. However, the IT Project determined that providers would not want to utilize both, and that those that use EHR’s would not be able to provide both codes. June asked all in attendance to go back to their clinical staff and provide feedback to the IT Project. The IT Project will gather more information as to whether NJSAMS will continue to collect the DSM or use the new ICD-10 codes, as it would be problematic to have providers who serve multiple populations of clients receiving both addiction treatment services and other mental health or residential services, to provide both code sets. This problem would be severe, especially those that have implemented electronic health record systems.
Following this discussion, June presented her quarterly report. She presented the statistics of hours and services that the IT Project performed during the quarter.
June also presented the EHR Readiness Survey that was sent out in October and again in December 2014. The response rate was consistent with the original respondents from two years ago. Providers who are not yet using EHR’s are planning to implement one. The data shows that approximately 41% of providers who responded are either using or plan to implement an electronic health record system, signifying that providers have the capacity to submit data electronically to the state.
June asked if there were any other obstacles, or issues relevant for all in the committee. There were none.
June thanked everyone for attending and motioned for the meeting to be adjourned.
Next IT PAC Meeting – Monday, June 16th 2015 10:30AM