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Tags Posts tagged with "OMHSAS"

OMHSAS

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The Office of Developmental Programs (ODP) and the Office of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services (OMHSAS) are pleased to announce a statewide conference focused on building capacity to better support the complex needs of individuals in the community. The conference theme is Expanding Capacity: Reaching Further.

The Conference will be held on Wednesday, August 21 and Thursday, August 22, 2019 at the Blair County Convention Center, 1 Convention Center Drive, Altoona, PA 16602.

Keynote and Plenary Speakers include:

  • Gina Calhoun – Program Director, Doors to Wellbeing, National Consumer Technical Assistance Center
     Topic: WRAP: Living a Self-Determined Well Life
  • Julie Gentile, MD, Professor and Chair, Psychiatry – Wright State University
     Topic: Practicing Medicine in the Digital World
  • Angela Moreland, PhD – Assistant Professor, National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center, Medical University of South Carolina
     Topic: Trauma-Informed Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: From Research to Practice

Breakout Session Topics include:

  • The Importance of Data Collection Relevant to Behavior Change and Medication;
  • Autism and the Justice System;
  • Communication and Collaboration: Supporting Transition Across the Lifespan; and
  • Creative Strategies for Mental Health Professional in State Hospitals.

For more information, visit: https://www.myodp.org/mod/url/view.php?id=22147
For registration information, visit: https://www.myodp.org/mod/url/view.php?id=22147REGISTRATION:

Online registration is now open and will remain available until Friday, August 9, 2019. The registration fee is $100 and includes lunch, break snacks, and all materials.

This conference is hosted by the Office of Developmental Programs and the Office of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services and supported by the Money Follows the Person grant funded by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

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As part of the Collaborative Capacity Building Initiative under the Money Follows the Person Administrative Funds, the Office of Developmental Programs (ODP), in coordination with the Office of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services (OMHSAS), is now offering free Mental Health First Aid courses for families, individuals, professionals, clinicians, and community supporters.

Mental Health First Aid is an 8-hour course that teaches you how to identify, understand, and respond to signs of mental illnesses and substance use disorders. The training gives you the skills you need to reach out and provide initial help and support to someone who may be developing a mental health or substance use problem or experiencing a crisis.

ODP and OMHSAS would like to introduce Jen Bankard as the contractor for this program. Jen is a certified MHFA instructor and has served as both a National Trainer and a Quality Evaluator for the MHFA program. You may contact her directly regarding scheduling a course in your area.

Jen Bankard 
email address: [email protected]
phone number: 717-460-1091

It is the hope of ODP and OMHSAS in this joint program to continue to build capacity to support the complex individual in the community. Please contact her now to schedule, and if you should have any additional questions, you may also contact Marlinda Smith at [email protected]. Please help share this information to others for their awareness and participation.

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Pennsylvania Acting Secretary of Human Services Teresa Miller announced the following three staffing changes within the Department of Human Services (DHS):

  • Executive Deputy Secretary. Leesa Allen, currently DHS’ Deputy Secretary for Medical Assistance Programs, will be moving into the Executive Deputy Secretary position. Ms. Allen has more than 23 years of experience in the Commonwealth in positions ranging from children and youth case worker to Chief of Staff for the Office of Medical Assistance Programs (OMAP). She will continue to support OMAP until her replacement is found.
  • Chief of Staff. Johanna Fabian-Marks will serve as DHS Chief of Staff. Ms. Fabian-Marks is coming from the Pennsylvania Insurance Department where she serves as the Special Deputy and Director of Life, Accident, and Health Insurance Product Regulation. Prior to joining the Insurance Department, she worked on implementation of the Affordable Care Act at the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
  • Deputy Secretary, Office of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services (OMHSAS). Lynn Kovich will become the new OMHSAS Deputy Secretary on November 13. Ms. Kovich has 26 years of experience in direct services and administration in both the nonprofit and government sectors, working with individuals who have developmental disabilities, mental illness, and substance use disorders, as well as those experiencing homelessness.

RCPA congratulates each of these individuals and commits to working with them in a constructive manner to advance the best interests of our shared constituencies.

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OMHSAS is looking to create a productive and cohesive group to collaborate on the development of comprehensive Inpatient Regulations. The regulations will contain four (4) subchapters that will address the provision of: Inpatient, Extended Acute Care, Residential Treatment Facilities for Adults, and Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facilities for Individuals under age 21.

The invitation to collaborate on this process will be limited to one or two representatives per group. Please consider who from your organization might be your best representative for each event.

For your information and planning purposes, Sarah Eyster, RCPA Mental Health division and Robena Spangler, RCPA Children’s Division have RSVP’d and plan to attend all events when possible. The complete invitation and schedule of events is available here.

We are looking forward to the work ahead and providing you with the updates as the process moves along.

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Please join the Office of Long-term Living (OLTL) and the Office of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services (OMHSAS) for an informational webinar on Community HealthChoices (CHC) on Friday, March 31, 2017 at 1:00 pm. The webinar will feature a presentation from OLTL’s Chief of Staff, Kevin Hancock. Kevin will provide an update on CHC, describe progress to date, and discuss next steps. There will be an opportunity for questions and answers at the end of the presentation.

Background on CHC
The commonwealth is in the process of implementing CHC. CHC is a mandatory managed care program for eligible individuals, providing physical health services and long-term services and supports, such as attendant care services. CHC is being geographically phased in across the commonwealth beginning in January of 2018 in 14 counties in southwestern Pennsylvania, followed in July 2018 by five counties in the southeastern portion of the commonwealth. The CHC implementation will be completed in January 2019, when the remaining counties are implemented. The move to CHC will assist DHS in continuing to provide quality services.  CHC managed care organizations will be required to coordinate covered services, Medicare, and behavioral health services for enrolled participants.

To register for the webinar, please follow this link. Once you have registered, you will receive a confirmation email containing connection information. Please note, the connection information you receive will be unique to you and should not be shared with others.

Reminder: All CHC-related information can be found here. Comments can be submitted electronically. If you have any questions, please contact the Office of Long-Term Living Bureau of Policy and Regulatory Management at 717-783-8412.

A listserv has been established for ongoing updates on the CHC program, titled OLTL-COMMUNITY-HEALTHCHOICES. If you would like to update or register your email address, please follow this link.

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Please join the Office of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services (OMHSAS) on Tuesday, April 4, 2017 at 10:00 am for a webinar on the new Peer Support Services (PSS) bulletin and standards, including information on expanding the service to include youth and young adults. Peer certification will also be discussed.

The webinar will include:

  • An overview of the new standards
  • Information on expansion of services to youth and young adults, including employee clearances, training resources, and other issues
  • Peer Certification

You are welcome to attend in person in the Clothestree Conference Room (Room 12-48, Commonwealth Tower, Harrisburg). If you plan to attend in person, please RSVP to Cristal Leeper by 12:00 pm on Friday, March 31, and you will receive additional information concerning meeting logistics. Please note, you will be responsible for any parking charges.

If you would like to attend via webinar, please register here. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing connection information. Please note, the connection information you receive will be unique to you and should not be shared with others. Please send any questions to Cristal Leeper.

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The Office of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services (OMHSAS) has issued a new bulletin: OMHSAS-16-04 Training Requirements for Licensed Behavior Specialists Who Use Behavioral Specialist Consultant-Autism Spectrum Disorder Services to Provide Applied Behavioral Analysis. The new requirements are effective as of Sunday, May 15, 2016. This bulletin applies to organizations, individuals, and entities approved to provide Behavioral Specialist Consultant-Autism Spectrum Disorder (BSC-ASD) services, and who use these services to provide Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) in the fee-for-service and HealthChoices behavioral health managed care delivery systems. The purpose of this bulletin is to notify providers of the training requirements for newly licensed behavior specialists who use BSC-ASD services to provide ABA and who meet the training requirements for the behavior specialist license through trainings approved by the Bureau of Autism Services or the Behavior Analyst Certification Board.

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RCPA has been advocating for years for significant changes to the Mental Health Outpatient regulations to help to protect and strengthen mental health outpatient services in Pennsylvania. In 2010, RCPA developed a position paper outlining the major problems in this area. In response to this crisis, the Office of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services (OMHSAS) developed a task force to work on regulation changes. The task force was a broad range of stakeholders which included consumers, counties, providers, and behavioral health managed care organizations. The task force worked for several years to develop a new set of regulations intended to protect and strengthen mental health outpatient services. The job of the task force was complete in 2014 and OMHSAS submitted the revised regulations to internal sources for approval. From beginning to now, it has been six years since we requested help. OMHSAS responded with strong support but the regulations have been held up in various areas of the department and the administration.

We received the following email today from Jean Rush, who has been the lead at OMHSAS since the beginning of the project:

“I wanted to share the current status of the OP regulation package since we drafted the revisions. With the expansion of Medicaid, the department has made changes to our State Plan Amendments for compliance with ACA which have been approved by CMS. This will require some minimal changes to the OP regulation package which were not an issue during our work.

OMHSAS will be making the minimal changes to the regulation package in conjunction with the Office of Medical Assistance Programs (OMAP) as the Medicaid Authority for the Commonwealth, as well as our Office of Legal Counsel.

The changes will not impact your recommendations but are necessary for compliance and the ability to complete the IRRC review. We will share the changes with you via email and if there are any areas where input is needed, I will be contacting you to schedule a call to discuss.

We appreciate all of the time and dedication to this project and will continue to work on making the changes to move this regulation package to completion. It is still a priority for the department.”

RCPA is hopeful that a resolution is forthcoming and will keep you all posted.

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