Session 4...8:30 am to 12:00 pm

Presented By:Judy Adams, President and CEO, Adams Home Care Consulting, Inc., Chapel Hill, NC

The OASIS home health assessment is probably the most important tool in home health today. This one tool determines the reimbursement your agency will receive for each episode of home health care, signals areas of review by your state surveyors, and identifies the outcome, potential adverse events and risk adjustment for your home health agency.

By the time of the NNE Conference, we will have had slightly more than four months of experience with the radically revised OASIS C. It's a perfect time to step back and see where we are with this important form. Ms. Adams will review the changes since the implementation of OASIS C and provide an update on the dozens of updates, changes and clarifications to the OASIS items since January. How are you are doing on the process items and do you need to revise your internal agency processes? What is working for you and what isn't? Finally, this half-day program allows time for Ms. Adams to answer any questions that you or your staff continue to have on OASIS items or your understanding of the proper scoring decisions.

Biography:

Judy Adams is President and CEO of Adams Home Care Consulting, Inc. and provides clinical and operational consultation and education services to home care, home health and hospice organizations.

Judy offers over 30 years of experience as a nurse executive and consultant. Her nursing experience includes educational, supervisory, administrative and staff positions in a variety of institutional and community health settings. Judy held numerous positions with two large home care agencies, including the management of a successful home care, private duty and supplemental staffing division as well as Quality Improvement Director, responsible for JCAHO preparation in a multi-branch organization. For over eight years, she worked as the special projects coordinator for the North Carolina Association for Home Care. She has also served as a consultant affiliated with several different consultation firms for more than 15 years.

Judy's experiences include working closely with regulators, third-party payers, occupational licensing boards and home care providers on numerous issues involving health and social supportive services in the home and community settings. She was actively involved in developing the first five versions of the accreditation standards for the Accreditation Commission for Home Care and was a member of the advisory committee that developed the NC Home Care licensure standards. Her technical expertise spans virtually any aspect of home care services.

For the past several years, Judy has provided a variety of operational and clinical consultative services to large and small home care organizations in several states in the eastern half of the United States and taught many teleconferences and day-long workshops on ICD-9 coding, OASIS, home health prospective payment system, coverage and documentation, and a variety of other home care topics for individual agencies, state associations and national organizations.

Judy earned her degree in nursing from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She also has a certification as a Homecare Coding Specialist - Diagnosis (HCS-D), from the Board of Medical Specialty Coding and a certificate as a OASIS Specialist - Clinical (COS-C) from the OASIS Certificate and Competency Board. As an active member of the North Carolina Association for Home Care, she serves on the Liaison Committee to the NC Division of Facility Services. She is also a member of the Advisory Panel to the Board of Medical Specialty Coding. Judy co-authored a chapter on home care in "The Law and the Elderly in North Carolina," and she has contributed to numerous educational manuals, videos and newsletters on a variety of home care topics. She is also the recipient of the Ellen B. Winston Award for Outstanding Contribution to Home Health in North Carolina.

Handouts Are Available Now

Presented By: Melinda Gaboury, Health Provider Solutions, Inc.

Session 1

Success as a Medicare home health provider isn't solely in the hands of clinicians in the field. Efficient "back office" operations are also critical to positive overall performance.

This session will identify the cost indicators that must be understood and analyzed in making operational decisions regarding back office staff, ranging from paperwork flow to technology efficiencies. In addition, the presenter will discuss the development of billing department performance measures. Finally, statistical data that is key in establishing cost per visit/episode information for your agency from the annual Medicare cost report will be covered. You'll learn about key nationwide statistics of costs by state, and how to use cost report data to compare your results to other agencies nationwide.

Session 2

This session, appropriate for both financial and clinical managers, will explore how the changes in OASIS-C have affected financial calculations and outcomes. Have agencies seen a financial impact on average HHRG or on overall cost to the agency due to OASIS-C implementation? How do you calculate the real impact? Have agencies had to change reporting and monitoring of the financial livelihood of the agency? All these questions and more will be answered!

Biography:

Gaboury is co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Healthcare Provider Solutions, Inc. (HPS). Melinda Gaboury and Mark Cannon founded the company in April 2001 to provide financial, reimbursement, clinical and cost reporting services to the home health, hospice and rehabilitation therapy industries.

Gaboury attended Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee and received her Bachelor of Business Administration in Accounting. She began her career in April 1991 with a large Tennessee based home health chain as a staff accountant. In this role, Gaboury was responsible for agency general ledgers, bank and payroll reconciliations, expense analysis for cost reporting and balance sheet analysis.

Prior to the inception of Medicare PPS Gaboury began researching, auditing and review processes with OASIS, ICD-9 Coding and clinical documentation. She has developed and taught clinician and billing Medicare PPS Training Workshops in a variety of venues. Gaboury's priority remains bridging the gap between clinical and financial issues in home health agencies. The one unique thing that Gaboury brings to the home health field is the development of very effective OASIS and ICD-9 Coding Education while being able to also teach the reimbursement aspect and how they are directly related.

Handouts are Available Now

Handouts for Session 1

Handouts for Session 2

Presented By: Bruce Mast, Bruce Mast & Associates, Inc.

An organization is a collaboration-a laboring together. As such, it is not defined by the individuals that comprise it but by the relationship between individuals. Leaders, therefore, focus on and define the relational space that connects people together and, in complex organizations, connects its teams together. Leaders' success is always defined by the success of the teams they lead. The ultimate goal is to create a fully effective organization, one in which the organization is getting the full value from its resources and full energy and engagement from its people. But how do you achieve that in an environment of constant transition, when there is a seemingly endless stream of disruptive changes from the competitive, regulatory and reimbursement landscape in which you and your organization operate?

As Max DePree wrote in Leadership is an Art, "The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality." This intensive half-day program will expose participants to an approach that will help them define the new reality for their teams, thereby reducing the confusion that is at the heart of most organizational resistance to change. With this common framework established, participants will learn how to build leadership on the front lines while fostering accountability.

Prepare yourself for a transformative experience!

Biography:

Bruce Mast is the President and Founder of BMA, a firm that has become well known for helping individuals and organizations who are stuck and/or at a juncture point find a productive way forward. This is accomplished through initiatives, like Organizational Design, Leadership Development, Executive Coaching, and Strategic Search, which are tailor-made and applied to have maximum impact on the situation.

These initiatives are based on BMA's proprietary models and programs developed and refined in partnership with our clients. The best known are Leadership On The Line® and Leadership In The Middlesm, BMA's innovative, leadership development processes which continue to have a profound impact on both individuals and organizations throughout the northeast.

In addition to his responsibilities at BMA, Bruce has taught Organizational Management and Leadership and served as the Thesis/Capstone advisor on as adjunct faculty for an MS in Management program. He also serves on the National Council and as the co-chair of the Governance Committee for Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, NH and on the Board of the NH Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. In 2004, he received the United Way's Douglas Eldridge Memorial Award honoring an outstanding board or staff member in recognition of his 10 years of service on the Board of Seacoast Hospice

Handouts are Available Now