The Office of Long-Term Living (OLTL) Critical Incident Management Unit monitors provider compliance in the application of guidance specific to critical incident management. OLTL has identified compliance concerns and is issuing the following clarification.

This communication focuses on required critical incident notification by provider agencies to the participant’s assigned service coordinator and the documentation of such notification in the Enterprise Incident Management (EIM) entry. The OLTL Critical Incident Management Bulletin, which is also available on OLTL’s website, indicates the following:

• Within 48 hours, the Managed Care Organization (MCO), Service Coordinator (SC), provider agency that discovers or has independent knowledge of the critical incident is to submit the First Section of the critical incident report to OLTL using OLTL’s critical incident management system. If the critical incident was discovered on a weekend or holiday, the 48 hours begin at 12:00 am on the first business day after discovery of the critical incident.
• Providers must inform the participant’s SC within 24 hours of discovering or first learning of a critical incident.

Notification to the participant’s SC that a critical incident was discovered must not be made using the HHAeXchange system. The required notification to the participant’s SC must be made by telephone call, electronic mail communication, or any other method that is agreed upon by all parties involved, excluding the HHAeXchange system.

In addition, the notification by the provider to the participant’s SC that a critical incident was discovered must be clearly documented in the EIM incident report, specifically within the “Agencies Contacted” page. Instructions are below:

1. Enter the first name of the SC in the Person Contacted (First Name) Field.
2. Enter the SC’s last name in the Person Contacted (Last Name) Field.
3. Enter the contact phone number. Note that the email address field is not mandatory; however, it should be completed when notification to the SC was made via email.
4. Click the SAVE button when all information has been entered.

See an example of page completion below.

Providers who are experiencing difficulty meeting the Critical Incident Management Bulletin requirements may email concerns to the resource account. Additionally, questions related to critical incidents may be emailed to the Critical Incident Management team member identified in any case-specific communication.