';
Authors Posts by Carol Ferenz

Carol Ferenz

3035 POSTS 0 COMMENTS

RCPA (Rehabilitation & Community Providers Association), PAR (Pennsylvania Advocates and Resources for Autism and Intellectual Disabilities), The Arc of Pennsylvania, TPA (The Provider Alliance), The Alliance of Community Service Providers, and MAX Association sent a letter to the general assembly requesting their support of our joint budget request.

As the organizations representing Pennsylvania’s Intellectual Disabilities/Autism (ID/A) service providers, we are asking them to include $430 million in the 2023/24 state general fund budget proposal to significantly improve the wage rates for the Direct Support Professionals (DSPs) who provide care to individuals with ID/A. This funding and its federal match are crucial because the ID/A system is in crisis. Nearly 60,000 Pennsylvanians with ID/A are at risk of losing or experiencing a reduction of essential services because there are not enough DSPs to care for them.

See the letter for full information.

The Office of Developmental Programs (ODP) wishes to create awareness of a recent announcement from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommending consumers, health care providers, and facilities not use certain surgical N95 respirators manufactured by O&M Halyard, and to use caution with certain surgical masks and pediatric face masks manufactured by O&M Halyard. For access to additional details, please visitFDA Safety Communication: O&M Halyard Surgical N95 Respirators, Surgical Masks, and Pediatric Face Masks.”

If this creates a hardship to a provider, please reach out to Douglas Trahey electronically.

On April 17, the 17th Annual EIFLE Awards were presented to 13 recipients during the Annual Conference on Financial Education (ACFE). The judges presented the awards to individuals and organizations for their distinguished accomplishments in developing, implementing, and promoting successful financial literacy education worldwide [read full article].

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

ODP would like to remind Enterprise Incident Management (EIM) users of an upcoming change to the EIM system relating to the identification of targets. Effective Monday, May 1, 2023, when the selection in the “Target Relationship to the Individual” drop down is Another Individual or Provider Staff Member, the format of the target identifier must be as follows: the first two initials of the first name, first two initials of the last name, and last four digits of the SSN. All initials must be capitalized and there can be no spaces, dashes, or other characters between the initials and the digits. For example: AOBR1234.

The requirement to identify targets using this format has been in effect since the publication of Bulletin 00-21-02 Incident Management.pdf (pa.gov). Please see pages 15–16 of this Bulletin for information on identifying targets. Previously, the system allowed for targets to be identified with a variety of formats. This change was announced in the HCSIS Release 90.15 Newsletter on March 31, 2023. HCSIS Release Newsletters can be found under the HCSIS Communique link in the HCSIS Learning Management System (LMS). For targeted technical assistance or questions, please contact your ODP Regional Office or send inquiries via email.

From MITC:

Interested to find out what happened to agency metrics in 2022? We were!

The 2022 North American Provider Performance Statistics are now available!

  • Based on real data, not surveys!
  • Summary data from 100 providers managing all type of programs from 23 states included.

The main highlights are:

  1. Hiring and retention both improved by a small percentage.
  2. Payroll and overtime costs rose. With Federal support starting to end in May 2023, this is a cause for concern.

To discuss your ideas or submit questions, email agencysuccessteam@mitcsoftware.com.

Download the 2022 NAPPS Report