Cenpatico Blog

As we begin a New Year, it is important for us to take the time to look back on the events of a year that has gone by quickly. Some of these reflections will no doubt bring to mind some wonderful and incredible memories such as the time we were able to spend with family and friends, or celebrating the birth of a child or remembering how you got that job or promotion you’ve been working so hard toward. Or maybe you said “I do” to the one you love or went on the vacation for which you had been saving for months and months. Maybe you finally reached that weight-loss goal you had been shooting for since the last time New Year’s came around.

Unfortunately, for many of us, this past year may have also included some difficult and challenging times.

But as we look forward to this New Year, it is even more important to reflect on the changes we want and need to make, and to make sure that we follow through on those changes.

To that end, it is now time to begin creating your New Year’s Resolutions. What are your goals personally and/or professionally? Have you created a plan to achieve your resolutions/goals? What can you do to keep the momentum going with sticking to your resolutions?

For many of us, one of the top New Year’s resolutions is to exercise more. Of course, for the first few weeks in January, we are in the gym several times a week along with everyone else that made the same resolution. Then, February and March roll around and the number of people in the gym fades – no more waiting around for a treadmill machine to be available, no more crowded exercise classes. So, what happened to everyone’s resolutions?

Here are a few tips to help keep you on track with your goals for the upcoming year:

Write Down your Resolution(s)

• Make sure your resolutions are meaningful & important to you

Create a Plan (be sure to write it down)

• Make sure your resolutions/goals are reasonable & attainable – losing 30 pounds in two weeks is probably not a reasonable one.
• Establish timeframes and deadlines
• Monitor and track your progress

Think “Year ‘Round”

• Rome wasn’t built in one day. Accomplishing your resolutions won’t happen in one day, either. Yes, it may take only a day or two to determine your resolutions but there are many steps that happen throughout the year to successfully achieve them.

Be Flexible

• Life has a funny way of throwing curve balls at us unexpectedly. You must be prepared to revise your plan, and sometimes it may even require changing the goal. For example, if your plan is to lose weight but you find out you’re pregnant, you’re going to have change that goal around. The new goal might be to eat healthier, exercise more, etc.

A few of my New Year’s Resolutions are to improve my balance between work/life – I want to spend more time at home with my family; help more people by donating to various charitable organizations and/or volunteer more of my time at community events; obtain the Strategic Professional Human Resource (SPHR) certification; and last, but not least, I simply want to Enjoy Life More!

Life is a precious gift. Take the time to take care of and pamper yourself. If you don’t, it will have a negative impact on your happiness and health. As a result, this will affect your family, friendships and productivity at work.

What are your New Year’s Resolutions? I encourage you to follow these steps to help you successfully achieve your own resolutions for 2010. Good Luck!

Larissa Sutton

Human Resources Manager

This entry is filed under Blog.

We at Cenpatico can look forward to 2010 with the benefit of another year’s worth of experiences and lessons learned that continue to allow us to provide our stakeholders, providers and members with the best possible managed behavioral healthcare.

From new acquisitions to new innovations, Cenpatico’s various experiences ran the gamut in 2009. In association with Centene, our parent company, and our affiliated health plans, 2009 has seen us begin to offer services in three new markets, and we now serve members in all of our markets with an improved, more wide ranging array of services than ever before.

“We were very busy this past year. We did a platform migration in Ohio, fully implemented Florida and implemented in South Carolina and Massachusetts,” said Cenpatico Chief Operating Officer Len Whyte.  “A lot of effort went into this because of the simultaneous nature of it.

“We had a lot of parallel processes going on at the same time, and I’m really proud of the fact that all of them were done with a high quality and functioned appropriately when we went live,” Whyte added.

A New Addition
Not only did Cenpatico open business in several new markets, we expanded our services to include speech therapy services via an acquisition by Cenpatico in the school-based division, Cenpatico School Products.

As of July 1, Cenpatico acquired InSpeech, Inc., an Arizona-based practice of Speech/Language Therapists who contract with school systems to provide services to eligible student populations under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

“We bought InSpeech really to compliment what we are doing in the schools with our Cenpatico School Products line,” Whyte said. “And yet, it has opened some doors for other opportunities for us.”

InSpeech is a dynamic practice of speech-language professionals who work, learn and grow together while serving the needs of a broad range of clients in a multitude of settings.

“It’s very exciting to have an opportunity with a new product line that expands the range of services we are able to offer,” added Whyte.

Committed to Quality
In every market, Cenpatico worked to maintain and improve the quality of care offered by our provider networks while also expanding access to recovery supporting services for all of our members. In 2009, our Quality Improvement department conducted five quality improvement studies. Three of the initiatives were clinical and the other two initiatives examined administrative processes.

“In each of the five studies, we are happy to report we have achieved a statistically significant improvement in the care and services delivered to our members and providers,” said Suzanne Feay RN CPHQ, Director of Quality Improvement.

Cenpatico is also continuing toward accreditation by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), a year-long process that is expected to conclude in March 2010. Along with the rest of the Cenpatico staff, Feay, who is spearheading the project, knows how vital NCQA accreditation will be for the company’s future.

“It’s a measure of commitment from the organization that we are committed to having quality business,” Feay said. “Accreditation in NCQA will push us to a new level of excellence and commitment to quality in the managed care market.”

While we will continue to look back at these and many other experiences from a successful year gone, we at Cenpatico maintain a sense of excitement at what is to come in 2010, when we will work harder than ever before to provide our members, providers and stake holders with the best possible managed behavioral healthcare.

“I’m so proud that our company is excelling in all operational areas,” said Cenpatico Chief Executive Officer Sam Donaldson, PhD. “We are delivering the most appropriate care and support for recovery to consumers, with high satisfaction rates from consumers, state and health plan customers, providers and our employees. Every day we demonstrate the value of a managed behavioral healthcare company in achieving, supporting and maintaining behavioral health Recovery, Resiliency and Results.”

From all of us here at Cenpatico, best wishes for the New Year.

Jimmy Donovan

Web Administrator

This is the final of three reports in a series detailing Cenpatico’s 2009 Year-in-Review. Please see below for links to the other releases.

Title                                                        Release Date
Part I – Taking the Clinical Initiative — Monday, December 28, 2009
Part II – Improving Provider Relations — Monday, January 4, 2010
Part III – Recovery. Resiliency. Results. — Friday, January 8, 2010

This entry is filed under Blog.

Throughout the past few years, and specifically in 2009, Cenpatico has worked unceasingly to offer its providers with the best possible service, specifically in terms of claims processing. Heading that charge has been Cenpatico’s Director of Operations Implementation, Amy Onest, with the support of various other departments.

“Because of the interventions my team has done over the past two-and-a-half years, we are now in a position where claims are going out the door faster and more accurately,” Onest said. “All problems haven’t been eliminated, but they have been significantly reduced.”

And the proof is in the pudding. In a year-end survey of provider satisfaction, overall satisfaction with being a network practitioner for Cenpatico increased from 76.4% to 86.8%.

“This increase reveals how hard Amy’s team has worked this past year, in getting the systems improved so we pay claims better,” said Cenpatico Chief Operating Officer Len Whyte.

“The best provider relations in the world can’t make a provider happy if we don’t pay their claims,” added Onest.

In 2009, Cenpatico paid its claims with more accuracy than ever. For example, two years ago, claims received needed to be manually reworked at a ratio of 95 per 1,000. By the end of 2009, that ratio was expected to be only 37 per 1,000.

“Len [Whyte] gave us the objective of making the system work lights out, to where if we turned off the lights and walked out the door, the system would work perfectly,” Onest said. “And for two years, we’ve been working towards that.”

Onest expected that, by Dec. 31, 2009, Cenpatico will exceed industry standards in all areas of its claims processing. It’s an achievement that looks even more impressive when considering that, from 2007 through the end of 2009, Cenpatico will have seen its claims received more than double from fewer than 500,000 to more than 1 million.

Jimmy Donovan

Web Administrator

This is the second of three reports in a series detailing Cenpatico’s 2009 Year-in-Review. Please see below for links to the other releases and a complete release schedule:

Title                                                        Release Date
Part I – Taking the Clinical Initiative — Monday, December 28, 2009
Part II – Improving Provider Relations — Monday, January 4, 2010
Part III – Recovery. Resiliency. Results. — Friday, January 8, 2010

This entry is filed under Blog.

In the clinical arena, 2009 was a year of innovation for Cenpatico.

“We manage many different markets and lots of different products,” said Vice President of Clinical Operations Cindy Peterson LCSW. “We recognize there is no one-size-fits-all from a clinical perspective.”

Among the many initiatives that were put in place and/or piloted this year, the Caring Voices cell phone program in Ohio was undoubtedly one of the most successful.

“In every one of our other markets where we’ve identified the need, we have gotten a few phones out. But it really seemed in Ohio that there was more of a need” for Caring Voices, Peterson said. “The reception from our consumers to this program has already been incredibly positive in this short period.”

More than 100 qualified consumers were served through Caring Voices in Ohio. Each of them received a preprogrammed cell phone that included predetermined phone numbers from both their clinical support system, including their primary care and behavioral health providers and other professional contacts, and their community support system.

“We give a cell phone to consumers that we think are struggling to stabilize,” said Peterson, who also noted that the idea was originally conceived in one of Cenpatico’s sister health plans under the Centene umbrella for selected perinatal consumers. “We conscripted their idea and said, ‘Let’s try that with behavioral health.’ And we’ve had as much or more success with it.”

Another of our clinical innovations in 2009 was the Discharge Tool Kit.

“One of the things we noted is that when you leave a medical facility, you get these huge packets of information,” Peterson said. “But when people leave the psychiatric hospital, they really weren’t receiving anything besides a piece of paper for a follow-up appointment.”

With the Discharge Tool Kit, Cenpatico’s members can count on leaving their respective stays in psychiatric hospitals with the educational information that can help them stay resilient and informed about their respective illnesses. The kit will let the consumer know they are not alone in their individual battles while also decreasing the likelihood of a return trip to the hospital. For children, Cenpatico provides a Build-a-Bear and a Wal-Mart gift card when the child attends their follow-up appointment. In addition, there is an educational book for children written by Cenpatico’s own staff in both English and Spanish.

“The book is about how to express yourself, and the feelings you have and create,” Peterson said. “We’ve received a lot of letters from families telling us what an impact [the Discharge Tool Kit] has made.”

The Kit has passed through various state approval processes, and in the past month, members began receiving these materials following hospital stays.

Jimmy Donovan

Web Administrator

*This is the first of three reports in a series detailing Cenpatico’s 2009 Year-in-Review. Please see below for a complete release schedule:

Title                                                        Release Date
Part I – Taking the Clinical Initiative — Monday, December 28, 2009
Part II – Improving Provider Relations — Monday, January 4, 2010
Part III – Recovery. Resiliency. Results. — Friday, January 8, 2010

This entry is filed under Blog.

As we struggle with shopping lists and invitations, compounded by December’s bad weather, it is good to be reminded that there are people in our lives who are worth this aggravation, and people to whom we are worth the same.
– Donald E. Westlake

To many people holidays are not voyages of discovery, but a ritual of reassurance.
– Philip Andrew Adams

As I enter into what will be my 52nd holiday season, I find myself to be constantly  reminded of the importance of ritual in our lives. Life is not easy; it is inherently chaotic, unpredictable and certainly not completely within our control. By any measure you use, life is inherently unfair.

Human beings have needed to develop rituals to bring some sense of stability in our lives, in an effort to at least try to impose some sense of order.  For example, have you ever tried to do something as simple as changing the order of tasks you do in the morning?  Do it sometime and you will have a very concrete example of the importance of those rituals, and just how important it is that they be done in an exact order.

It isn’t simply because we will forget to brush our teeth and feed our children if we don’t do this morning ritual.  It is really about waking out of the chaotic state of dreams and slumber and facing a stretch of time that is a new day, still formless, often with many challenges and demands.  In short, rituals of all forms and fashions ground us and help strengthen us to go forward each day.

I find, like many people, that the stretch from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day can feel overwhelming.  People report feeling stressed, and I’m among those that complain about the shopping, social events, putting on weight and travel. Yet, interestingly enough and in spite of the public’s perception, suicide rates are lower throughout this time of year, and fewer people access mental health services. This supports the idea that whatever stress this time of year imposes on us, the security and reassurances of these rituals comfort us more than we know.

As the quote above describes, the holidays, and all the rituals they bring, are a reassurance that we can count on some things to help us stabilize our lives, and, perhaps more importantly, give us concrete assurance that we are loved by others.  These rituals of the holiday season, year after year, remind us that we are not alone in this challenging existence, and that because of other people, life is worth the aggravation.

From all of us at Cenpatico to all of you, our consumers, customers and providers, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

Sam Donaldson, Ph.D.
President & CEO, Cenpatico LLC

This entry is filed under Blog.