Also attending this conference were approximately 800 private and public agencies and their administrators and various providers, advocates, researchers and students, among others.]]> I had the privilege to attend the 90th Annual Meeting of the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) from Jan. 24-28 in Washington, D.C. The CWLA is the oldest and largest membership-based child welfare organization in the United States and a prominent leader in advocacy, policy, research and service for this population.

Also attending this conference were approximately 800 private and public agencies and their administrators and various providers, advocates, researchers and students, among others. The five-day event allowed for non-stop opportunities for me to network with others from across the country and to learn about programs in other states. This was my second trip to this conference, so I was familiar with the schedule and knew to wear my comfortable shoes and to take lots of business cards with me for sharing.

As most of my colleagues know, I love talking about our experiences with the Texas Foster Care program, and I am always full of questions for representatives from other states to gauge where we are and what we can learn to improve our program.

This year, the conference consisted of four “mini summits,” each with a series of five workshop sessions on a focused area of practice, including Leadership, Residential Treatment, Juvenile Justice Systems Integration and Early Childhood Mental Health.

The Residential summit was of particular interest in that we have approximately 1,500 members in residential treatment in Texas and transitions between residential and community care can be very challenging.  We also have concerns about identifying behavioral or mental health disorders in young children to refer them to appropriate treatment.  Likewise, many of our children have involvement with Juvenile Justice, and the network of services is the same for both populations. Each of these areas a critical for program designs for foster care.

I began the week by attending a “Professional Institute” on Sunday. This Institute was an introduction to the Building Bridges Initiative sponsored by SAMHSA that was started several years ago through a grant to “strengthen partnerships between community and residentially based service providers, policymakers, advocates, families and youth.” The initiative “seeks to improve integration, collaboration and innovation and promote best practices that will lead to positive outcomes for children and families.” The work done through this initiative has a great deal of applicability to our Texas program as we have participated in a Texas Public Private Partnership group focused on the top-20 youth in the Texas system that have had difficulty maintaining stability in residential treatment and the community.

Probably the most impactful presenter was a young man who was sent from his home in a large Midwest city to a residential program in Arkansas for most of his teen years. He has since graduated from college, earned his master’s degree and is now an administrator of a mental health program. This young man made a moving presentation on how it feels as a youth to be in a residential program far from family and supports with rules and programs that seem to not have an individual correlation to what the youth needs to improve to return home or to become independent. I look forward to sharing these presentations with my colleagues at the Public Private Partnership in Texas and within the STAR Health program.

I came away from the conference reaffirmed that we all share the responsibility of promoting positive outcomes in an integrated, comprehensive child- and family-focused manner.  Foster Care happens within a system that has many stakeholders.  Behavioral Health is a key stakeholder, but in order for us to be successful in promoting resiliency and recovery we must integrate our services with the rest of the system.  This requires relationships with all of the other stakeholders and understanding of their role within the member’s life.

For anyone who would like more in-depth information on the conference, please contact me at mmcmann@centene.com or at 512-406-7253.

Marsha McMann
Director, Foster Care

From new acquisitions to new innovations, Cenpatico’s various experiences ran the gamut in 2009.]]> 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

“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.]]> 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

“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.]]> 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

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.]]> 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

November is Children’s Mental Health Month and a time of Thanksgiving.  Therefore, I want to take this opportunity to express my thanks to all of our providers, caregivers and dedicated behavioral health staff to making the world a better place for the over one million children who are our members.]]> It is hard to believe, but here we are in the eleventh month of 2009 and the busy holiday season is about to be upon us.  Before we become engrossed in all of the festivities, let us each take a moment to reflect on the important work that we are a part of at Cenpatico.

November is Children’s Mental Health Month and a time of Thanksgiving.  Therefore, I want to take this opportunity to express my thanks to all of our providers, caregivers and dedicated behavioral health staff to making the world a better place for the over one million children who are our members. It is important to remember that everything we do from the time we read our first email of the day, process a claim, run a report, take a phone call or attend a meeting, we are engaged in a process with the goal of providing needed services to vulnerable people, many of them children.

While our industry is taking a hit in the media as of late, it is my belief that we can be very proud of the work that we are doing.  Our time, energy and the majority of our resources are spent ensuring that members access good care and making sure that our providers are paid appropriately for doing so.  We know that services and supports for our members is what facilitates recovery and that behavioral health issues need not be life-limiting.

I am particularly grateful at this time for our providers who are the closest to our members and carry out some of the most important work imaginable.  I experienced this in a very personal way in the last month when a dear friend of almost 30 years and Cenpatico provider in our Kansas market, died unexpectedly.  At his memorial service the room was packed with people whose lives were changed by this dear man.  Most touching were the numbers of young people who came forward to pay tribute to a clinician who they felt literally saved their lives by listening, providing counsel and direction and most important, by inspiring hope.  They told of a man who went above and beyond the therapy session to intervene with caseworkers, teachers, employers to advocate for them.   The impact of his work was not celebrated on a daily basis and he did not seek recognition for it.  However, his legacy lives on in the thousands of lives he impacted through his work.   It is my hope that we can all feel that we are a part of such work as well.  So thank you all, for your dedication and hard work for our members.  Throughout the county people are better off today because of you.

Marsha McMann MSW

Director of Foster Care STAR Health

“How many of us have been affected in some way by Mental Illness?”

I turned to look at the other hundred or so people in that hall.]]> Sitting in a large meeting hall about a month ago, a question came from one of the speakers I was listening to that that made quite an impact:

“How many of us have been affected in some way by Mental Illness?”

I turned to look at the other hundred or so people in that hall. Old, young, women, men, multiple races and nationalities, people dressed in three piece suits and those dressed in t-shirts and jeans, those who were known public figures and those who would blend in with the crowd…

Every hand in that room was up.

One of the greatest obstacles to recovery from mental illness is stigma. It stops people from being open about their problems and from getting the help they or a loved one need, but as I looked into the faces of those in that hall, there was no hesitancy, no shame, no meekness…

Every hand in that room was up.

Working for a Managed Behavioral Health Company I hear and see the stats on mental illness daily. One illness affects 1 out of 4, another, 4 out of 5, yet another 7 out of 10. I can tell you first hand those stats don’t tell the whole story…

Every hand in that room was up.

Mental Illness affects us all. Maybe it’s a loved one, a friend, a colleague, or a neighbor. Those who suffer from mental illness are not alone, those seeking help are not alone, and those who know someone with a mental illness are not alone…

Every hand in that room was up.

The odds are good we all know someone or have had our lives in some way touched by someone with a mental illness. I know it has touched my life…

My hand in that room was up.

October is a National Depression and Mental Health Screen Month. Within October is also Mental Illness Awareness Week (October 4-10,) Depression Screening Day (October 8,) and World Mental Health Day (October 10.) I encourage you to check out our News section each of those days to find links to learn more about each. Also please look around our site to learn more about mental illness by checking out our Behavioral Health Resources Section. Join us and our great Community Outreach Partners in becoming more aware of mental illness and fighting the stigma…

In other words, put your hand up.

Bobby DiPasquale

Web Specialist